


More than Just Obscure

by Memeko



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Time, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Experimentation, Maybe - Freeform, Obscurial Credence Barebone, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Revenge, Slow Build, Untraditional Family Dynamics, like really slow burn, or is it slow burn, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2018-10-01 08:49:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10185485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memeko/pseuds/Memeko
Summary: Mary Lou didn't just severely abuse the children she adopted, she kept the special letters they received in the mail as well. Grindelwald has had his fingers in more than just MACUSA, and for longer than anyone thought. Credence isn't the only talent languishing in the old church. Percival Graves, rescued from the closet where he spent several months, is desperate to try and patch his life back together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written anything before, please be gentle with me!! This is based off a dream I had after watching fantastic beasts, please enjoy!

Credence and his sisters flew near silently out over New York city, something that had only become possible through a great deal of practice. 

To his right and slightly behind him, Temperance soared with a great deal less reserve than her brother’s single minded drive. 

He felt something along the lines of fondness as he watched her subtly looping around and back on herself as she flew, thin tendrils extending and whipping about her center.

Unlike her namesake, she tended to be a great deal more incorrigible than his other sisters, but he found it difficult to repress what little happiness she could find. 

Credence thought of how strange it would have seemed, all those months ago, to be fond of such a unbelievably destructive force of nature.

To be fond of this many clouds of destruction would have seemed to defy the human mind, finding useful ways of channeling all that negative energy seemed like an act of God.

Abilities (or symptoms of being cursed, as he regularly called them) like he was using now in his current state of roiling blackness. 

For instance, Credence's line of sight was enormously improved when compared to his regular vision when he was in his corporeal body.

In this form, he had an encompassing view that included not only his front and sides, but also behind, above, and below him. 

He was grateful for this wonderful part of his curse however, all the better to keep an eye on all three of his younger sisters.

At his left Chastity flew little better than Temperance, streaking out to the very edge of keeping just to the right and behind him. 

Credence found it almost funny how the two of them were so alike, despite their lack of common parentage. 

With a muted roar, he checked Chastity's position and growled approvingly when she slowed and reformed their formation. 

He felt her apology in the form of the odd language they all shared, their very own demon language. 

A series of pictures, feelings, smells, and remembered sounds flashed through his link with Chastity, conveying far more than simple words ever could.

In return he sent his own series of stimuli, conveying his understanding and a fervent wish that they could all fly as unrestrained as they pleased.

Their positions in the formation were too important for their safety, however much they wanted something different.

If trouble were to pop up, Credence would be at the front, not only to take the brunt of the attack, but hopefully to keep his sisters from diving into unnecessary trouble.

Below and at the tail of their formation flew his youngest sister Modesty. 

Unlike her sisters she shared more of Credence's disposition, temperate, mild, and kind, unless riled into action.

Credence kept Modesty at the rear, in the event of trouble that they couldn't handle, they had practiced maneuvers that kept Modesty in the safest position possible. 

Out of the four of them, Modesty was the least suited to their curse, and Credence could never understand why she had undergone the dramatic change like the rest of them had.

As dearly as he loved all of them, his other sisters (along with himself) kept a raging core within themselves that they used to sustain their transformations. 

Modesty however didn’t seem to have this, and remained the sweet child he’d always known, confusing though it was.

Credence reflected on this and the night sky as they flew over the city, grateful for the cloudiness of the evening and the late hour.

Do to the ferocious dark clouds and sparks that currently made up their forms at the moment, it often made it difficult to fly without attracting undue attention.

The other option (walking around New York during the daytime) was an issue in itself, considering the fact that they were four highly volatile demons.

(The amount of near misses was so very alarming, Credence was sure he’d be prematurely grey in a few years.) 

It also made finding food, and suitable places to sleep all the more difficult to come by. 

It wasn't like they had anywhere to go really, not with the church being in utter ruins around their dead ma.

Credence turned his mind away from their mother and tried to focus on where they were over the city.

They flew over and passed skyscraper after skyscraper before finally landing in a half abandoned library building.

As the four of them landed on the roof the of the building, at the darkened rear, they coalesced back into their more corporeal bodies. 

Credence looked at his three sisters: their dirty arms and legs, soot smudged faces, bodies thin and pale as waifs from a nursery rhyme.

The thought was almost funny, considering how they were like waifs from a fairy tale, or rather from a nightmare.

Tired and as dirty as ever, the four of them made their way to the most completed part of the roof and huddled down into their makeshift bed.

Although their bodies ran a great deal warmer than they had before they had been made into demons, it was still extremely cold, warranting the need to sleep in a large heap. 

Reminiscent of their flying formation, Credence lay half reclining in the corner in order to keep watch. 

Modesty slipped into his lap and tugged one of their filthy blankets up over them as Temperance and Chastity snuggled up on either side, dragging the remainder of the blankets around them.

As per their usual routine the girls almost immediately fell asleep with Credence keeping first watch. 

He didn't mind really, it was more or less the only free time he got nowadays anyway. 

He let his mind wander where it liked, usually starting off with mundane enough thoughts that included the unfinished library that they were living in, the weather, people he had seen in the street and so on.

As per his ritual, his thoughts came around to more serious things like how they would find food the next day, where would they live when the temperature got colder. 

After those thoughts eventually came the darker thoughts, shot through with pain half remembered and have rooted in the present. 

Thoughts of their abusive adopted mother usually came first and all the pain she had I inflicted on the four of them over the years. 

Modesty shivered in her sleep and snuggled her face closer into Temperance's hair, in doing so baring the scar along her hairline on the right side. 

His ma had done that one afternoon while he and Chastity had been handing out fliers. 

Temperance had a scar from that day too, but hers was along her left shoulder and ended in the middle of her back. 

Mary Lou was undeniably heavy handed in her punishments when it came to dishes exploding in retaliation for unwarranted abuse. 

Mary Lou was even heavier handed if one of her children showed the slightest bit of defiance. 

He stroked Temperance's hair gently while she slept. 

Not even Mary Lou Barebone could beat that spark completely out of Temperance. 

After his mind was done reliving these torments, a random collection each night from a truly massive store, Credence's thoughts came round to one last torment. 

Him. 

That traitorous, Him. 

That twisted King demon, that traitorous, Him. 

THAT FUCKING BASTARD , TWISTED DEMON, THAT TRAITOROUS HIM. 

PERCIVAL GRAVES. 

All three of the girls stirred in their sleep, responding to the rage and smoke that began simmering off Credence’s skin. 

Through their deep connection his sisters had started smoking as well, subconsciously gearing up for whatever fight was coming their way. 

Not wanting to disturb them any further, Credence began breathing deeply through his nose until the smoke had coiled back into his flesh and his heart had calmed. 

He stroked each sister's hair in turn until they had settled down again, their breath deepening as they resumed the steadiness of sleep. 

With a force of will he turned his thoughts to other things less provoking and looked over the library around them. 

He did this until the sky eventually lightened and Chastity stirred into wakefulness alongside him. 

She blinked up at the sky in confusion and then turned to glare at Credence. 

She didn't speak, speaking out loud might wake their other sisters. 

She reached out a smoky tendril toward him and he responded in kind. 

Within the contact he felt her anger at not being woken, her peevishness at being treated younger than she was, and her concern over his lack of sleep. 

He took in her tirade without comment or objection until it was through. 

When he responded, he started with an image of three girls that were of an age of Chastity herself, carefree, happy, and full of life. 

He then compared it to the image of yesterday when he had counted her ribs through her threadbare dress during the rainstorm, her exhausted smile as she lifted Modesty up over her head so that she could get a look at a display of cakes in a bakery window. 

He finished the thought with the image of her sleeping peacefully throughout the night. 

He regretted his thoughts somewhat when Chastity's eyes teared up and reflected his current visage back at him. 

The image of a gaunt, near skeletal wastrel was enough to make him wince. 

Even at their lowest in Mary Lou's care, they had never been quite this bad off. 

Credence nodded and sent a thought that went along the lines of "point well taken".

Chastity sent an image of Credence sleeping the few hours before dawn when the others would wake up. 

He nodded and rolled his shoulders, listening to their pops and protestations before settling as comfortably as he could against the wall and closed his eyes. 

No sooner had they closed, he was gently, but firmly pulled by his ankles until he was lying flat on the wooden scaffolding boards. 

He lifted himself up enough to show her one open eye and a raised eyebrow, to which she responded by donning a lofty expression while she studied her nails. 

With an amused huff Credence settled back down between he's sisters to allow himself a few hours of rest. 

A bit of nausea worked his way into his gut as he drifted off.

***************************************************** 

Percival Graves was a mess. 

Admitting that he was a mess always took a great deal more effort than he had thought it would. 

He ran a shaking hand through his hair, hair that he still didn't quite recognize. 

Since his ordeal that had consisted of being cursed into a pain filled stupor for six months out of his life, a great deal had changed. 

A month out of that stupor had left him bereft of a job (for the time being), scars that were still vivid against his overly pale skin, salt and pepper starting at his temples, and an occasionally uncontrollable hand tremor. 

Currently it was that last problem that was giving him grief. 

No matter how hard he had tried within the last hour and a half to successfully write responses to his steadily growing pile of mail, the tremor just steadily got worse. 

Gritting his teeth he crushed his right hand with his left in an attempt to steady it. 

As he lowered his hand to the parchment, ink splattered all over the page as it juddered rebelliously. 

He kept on however until the characteristic swirl over his "D" in dear broke off the tip of the quill, drenching the area around the letter in color. 

With an anguished howl, he tossed the quill away and began throwing and knocking everything off the surface of his desk. 

A few minutes later he flopped tiredly to the floor, his head in his continuously shaking hands. 

In hindsight he probably should have listened to the healers in the hospital. 

He felt the tremors against his face and regretted not even considering the additional therapy they had offered him after he was given a basically clean bill of health. 

However, the thought of going back to the hospital in his pitiable state only sickened him more. 

The pitying looks, the “It’ll take time to recover completely”, the “Take it slow, you’ve been through a lot”, and the “We’re so sorry Director Graves”, all made him want to scream. 

No, better to try and stick it out away from all those other eyes. 

It wasn't like the hospital was going anywhere, was it? 

If it truly got bad enough he reasoned to himself, he would check himself back in, right? 

A dark part of himself knew there was no way in hell that he'd ever check back in voluntarily. 

He did his best to ignore that part as he heaved himself off the floor and staggered out of his office. 

By way of habit he made his way towards his bedroom, but suddenly lurched away from it and instead made his way to one of the guest bedrooms. 

He dropped onto the duvet of the four poster and rolled onto his back. 

Like most things in his life, Grindelwald had taken away Grave's bedroom. 

Not only did the room no longer smell like him, but over half of his personal belongings were missing. 

The dark brown furniture set that he'd inherited from his grandparents (they had left him the house too), was gone. 

Half of his wardrobe: coats, suits, trousers, dress robes, gone. 

The bastard had even gotten rid of every left shoe in his closet

Percival was by no means a hoarder, but there had been numerous bits and pieces that he had picked up within the scope of his life. 

And they were all gone. 

There were other things too, pettier or subtler things that the dark wizard had done to his home. 

The carefully labeled tin containers in his pantry that had contained foodstuffs like beans, rice, oatmeal, etc. had had their contents switched around or outright replaced with something foul. 

The blank envelopes that had been organized by size within his desk were shuffled and hidden within random corners of his office. 

His beloved family library had had its books rearranged, along with the additions of many morbid or perverse drawings randomly penned throughout the collection. 

It was a different facet to the torture he’d already endured, a different kind of psychological torment that reduced his only haven in the world to a series of unpleasant and annoying discoveries. 

It was a tactic used to make him even more uncomfortable that the already aforementioned torture. 

The biggest problem was that it was working. 

At least once a day, Graves found something that had been altered in some way that was engineered to make his life more uncomfortable. 

Not even his own house was safe anymore, but since there wasn’t anywhere else to go, he had to stay put. 

He considered intermittently the idea of setting the house on fire, setting himself back to square one, and starting over fresh. 

He stopped from ever really getting far enough to cause concern though, this house was rooted in his soul, as damaged as both of them were at the moment. 

While these thoughts continued Graves kept staring at the ceiling. 

He stayed in his supine position for several hours until the protestations of his stomach roused him enough to make his way toward the kitchen. 

He caught his reflection in a hallway mirror and shuddered, seeing the face that had belong to someone else besides himself. 

When he eventually made his way into the kitchen, he winced at the morning light streaming through the windows. 

His gazed drifted around the suddenly foreign feeling kitchen. 

With a grimace he turned on his heel, grabbed his coat and wallet and limped out the door and into the city. 


	2. Chapter 2

Credence coughed as quietly as he could, hoping that the sounds of the busy street around the corner diluted the sound.

He was getting sick, or rather he had somehow gotten sick.

This had rarely happened throughout his childhood and quite frankly, couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

He glanced back to his sisters as they dug through the garbage cans in the alley, thankfully still oblivious to his coughing.

He shifted uncomfortably on his perch on the low wall where he was keeping lookout.

The added height that his position on the wall gave him made it easy to see if anyone was coming down the alley or the side street that bisected it a handful of yards away.

The awfulness of their situation was as clear as it ever was as he watched his sisters root through the refuse in an attempt to find food.

He knew this was the likeliest reason he had gotten sick, since the fact they had little to no contact with any other people meant he couldn't have picked it up from anyone else.

There wasn't really a need to be around other people, what did four demons have in common with regular people anyway?

When normal people were angry or afraid, they didn’t have to worry about exploding into gigantic clouds of fury that had enough strength to bring down a building.

They didn’t have to worry (or at least not as much as the Barebone children) about witches on the hunt for them.

Credence’s brooding was interrupted by Modesty’s cry of triumph as she held up a mostly intact head of cabbage.

Chastity took it from her sister and began examining it carefully.

It was a well-known fact that many people poisoned their garbage to keep people like them from rooting through it.

She must have deemed it safe because she quickly tucked it into her bag and began digging through the crates alongside Modesty.

Over the next half hour the three girls scoured the alleyway while Credence kept watch.

When his nausea had reached a peak he gingerly climbed down off the wall and ducked behind it.

He was sweating and panting slightly as he leaned against the filthy wall.

Using the rumble of several workmen and their draft horses passing by the alley he vomited quietly into an old can.

“Credence?” called Modesty, noticing his absence. Credence leaned his head against the wall as he panted.

He felt a great deal better having thrown up, even though there had been little enough in his stomach.

“Credence?” echoed Chastity, her voice growing worried. “Taking a gentleman’s break” he called back.

Listening with a small smile as Modesty and Temperance giggled he heaved himself up to a standing position.

“You could join me y’know, this has to be one of the finest alleys I've ever had the pleasure of using.”

Modesty and Temperance began out right laughing as Chastity swatted at them gently with an old newspaper, one hand hiding her smile.

“Ladies!” she admonished in mock severity.

She looked back to Credence, noticing his pallor.

She made a questioning face over the heads of her sister as their giggles subsided.

He waved off the gentle push at his mind and hopped over to their side of the wall.

Chastity nudged the girls to walk in front of her as she hefted her bag higher for Credence to see.

The cabbage was a large visible lump through the thin material, but to Credence’s delight, there were a few other lumps in the bag as well.

As they walked around the corner of the alley Credence saw two burly men engaged in trying to throttle one another.

Chastity quickened her pace steering Modest ahead of her towards the next alley.

Temperance stood still in the middle of the alley, watching with fascination until Credence steered her after Chastity.

They walked quickly after that until they had the put several other alleys between them and the two men.

At the entrance of an ally that reconnected with the busy street Chastity declared lunch.

She handed Credence the two cans of food they had discovered and he set to work with his pocket knife trying to open them.

Chastity sat herself on the cleaner side of the pavement and began peeling the cabbage apart, leaf by leaf, checking for worms.

The other two girls followed suit and sat on either side of Chastity while their brother completed the circle.

Credence worked the tops off the two cans to find that one held a strange meat paste in water while the other held what smelled like asparagus.

He handed them over to Chastity and watched as she doled out a bit of each onto individual leaves of cabbage before rolling them up and passing them around.

Modesty made a face at the smell while Temperance wolfed down her share of the food.

She paused with her mouth half full of food to look meaningfully at Modesty before pointing a finger at her mouth.

Modesty made another face, but immediately took a large bite when Temperance moved to take the food away.

About halfway into the cabbage Chastity gave up on the increasingly rotten leaves and pitched it back into the alley where it sailed gracefully into an old crate.

Credence forced down his portion of the food, doing his best to ignore the nausea that was sneaking back into his stomach.

He looked at Modesty as she pointed to a man on the other side of the street, watching them. “Time to go” he said in a low voice as the man began to make his way across the street.

With practiced movements the four of them snatched up their meagre belongings and moved back further into the alley.

When they reached the junction that led into the adjoining alley the bigger of the two men from earlier made a grab at Chastity.

Credence surged forward and punched the man in the jaw, knocking him aside.

Without missing a beat, Credence snatched Chastity’s hand and bolted down the alleyway toward their right, their sisters grimly hanging on to Chastity’s other hand and skirt.

They had only gone seventy or so yards when the alley made another right turn into a dead end.

Credence nearly collided with a wall that he knew had never been there before.

He whirled around, pushing his sisters behind him.

The wall behind them made a grating sound and moved a foot forward, pushing his sisters into him and making him stumble.

The man from across the street came into view from around the corner whistling and idly swinging his pocket watch in his left hand.

His right hand held a wand which he flicked forward, causing the wall to jump forward again, making them all stumble forward again.

Smoke began drifting up and off their skin as the man came closer.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he tutted as he grinned "None of that mess if you please, you know how mad the boss would get if I brought any of you back in any condition less than stellar".

He gave the wand another twitch, harder this time, making the wall collide hard with the four siblings and knocking them to the ground.

Temperance grabbed a loose chunk of brick from the ground and threw it hard at the man.

Like her older sister, her aim was unerringly accurate.

With a crack the brick hit the man directly in the forehead.

Either the man was made of really stern stuff, or his magic had taken the brunt of the blow because he didn’t stop he easy pace forward.

The grin however fell from his face and he stopped swinging his watch.

As he pocketed it he jerked the wand forward again, but this time Credence was ready in the span of two heartbeats, he was across the alley.

With each passing step he shed more and more of his corporeal body, becoming smoke, fire, and vengeance. He had recognized the man as soon as he had come around the corner of the alley, a man by the name of Bronstein.

A man that was Percival Graves’ right hand man.

*************************************************************************************

Percival Graves burnt his tongue as he took a sip of his coffee.

When had the waitress come back around and refilled it?

He looked at the clock above the door inside the No-Maj diner.

11:47 read the time.

He reached out and tapped one of the waitresses on the elbow.

She was a matronly lady with an expression that brokered little patience for foolishness.

“Sorry”, he apologized and pointed at the clock.

“Is that the right time?” he asked.

She glanced at the clock.

“No hon, it’s about a half hour slow.”

She ambled away to the next table while Graves sat at his booth dumbfounded.

Where had the past three hours gone?

Had he been sitting here this entire time just staring off into space?

He rubbed at his eyes with a slightly shaky hand and whispered “What’s happening to me?” to himself.

“You’ll be fine son” said an older male voice from across Graves’ booth.

He looked up to see an older No-Maj in military dress drinking coffee.

The man lifted his cup in Graves’ direction.

“All the boys home from the war get the shakes every now and again.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of, best thing is to find you something worthwhile to hang on to”.

Graves gave the man a weak smile.

The man nodded and went back to perusing his newspaper.

Graves dug out his wallet and thumbed through to the compartment with his No-Maj cash.

He left enough money on the table to cover his breakfast with plenty left over for a substantial tip.

With a last nod at the old soldier he made his way out of the diner and out on to the busy street.

The side of town he was on was not a well to do as the side he lived on and neither was the diner he had just left.

Graves figured that the locale slimmed down the chances he had of running into any one he knew from the home office.

He didn’t want to have to try and fake his way through questions about his health.

The idea made him grimace at the pavement as he walked around aimlessly.

He didn’t feel up to trying to clean anymore of his house so he walked with the flow of the crowd, letting it pull him as it would.

Sometimes he came out of his muddled thoughts long enough to check his surroundings, not particularly interested in getting lost in a bad part of town.

For the most part he kept to the busy public streets of his city.

After a while he found himself strolling through Central Park with a group of tourists who ogled at every little thing in the park.

He stopped for a while and listened to an old Chinese man play the violin for tips.

The music moved him deeply as much as the deep emotion that crossed the man’s face as he played.

Graves sat on a bench and listen for a long time, finding himself smiling a little when the man changed his tune to something more spritely when a young couple dropped a handful of coins into his violin case.

Graves got up and stretched, feeling his joints pop and crackle more than they had had five months ago.

He walked over to the old man’s case and dropped in a few bills.

The man beamed and tipped his hat to Graves before continuing his playing.

Feeling a bit better, he strolled deeper into the park until he came to the little bridge that separated the wizarding park from the No-Maj park.

Not quite willing to step into the wizarding side, he continued past the bridge and came to a clear open area with a few fountains.

There weren’t any other people around, but it didn’t really bother him.

Being outside somewhere quiet usually brought his spirits up and he wondered why he hadn’t taken a walk before.

He wandered aimlessly for a while till he felt the lack of sleep begin to creep into his brain and joints.

Heaving a sigh Graves was about to take out his wand when all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

He looked around wildly, his auror trained sense going on high alert.

Was it Grindelwald, coming back to finish what he had started?

He knew the man was in custody still, but what if he had escaped?

Graves cursed his befuddled mind and his stupidity at taking such a risk.

**THIS** is why he hadn’t gone on any walks since leaving the hospital.

He drew out his wand, turning this way and that looking for whatever it was that had set him off.

As he looked back toward the bridge, he failed to notice the long black shadow come hurdling through the trees.


	3. Chapter 3

Credence streaked out over the city, feeling for his sisters through their link.

In the event of something like this, Credence had had them practice drills and hypothetical exercises that would hopefully get the girls to safety.

After he had gone after Bronstein, he’d been only vaguely aware of what his sisters were doing.

He knew for a fact however that they had made it safely away, he would have known immediately if otherwise.

His thoughts flicked back to Bronstein as he flew just above the icy cloud cover.

If there were different types of witches out there, Credence guessed that Bronstein didn’t usually work with trying to catch demons.

The few times that Credence had seen him, he had always been with Graves; typically assisting him with the process of trying to force the transformation on the four of them or relaying instructions to the other five men that usually assisted them.

The plan to catch them (in hind sight) was rather clumsy, especially with the other two men Bronstein had hired trying to kill each other before the four of them had even made it to the ambush point.

Bronstein had gotten away, but not before Credence had burned off a large section of his arm.

Not his wand arm thought Credence a little ruefully.

The smell had been rather horrifying, as he heard the scream of agony Bronstein had let loose before disappearing from the alley.

How and why did witches always do that, that instant disappearing business anyway?

Guilt and a kind of perverse pride had filled Credence as he whipped back and forth within the confines of the alley.

He had, at least for the moment, done enough damage to a witch to make him “flee the field”.

The other man was nowhere to be found, until Credence found his body where the girls most likely made their escape.

When he had checked to make sure that he was alone, Credence had slowly coalesced back into his normal body.

The instant he had though, he had doubled over and thrown up the little bit of food he had eaten earlier.

The worst part of it was his stomach, heaving emptily while Credence did his best to try and gasp air into his lungs.

A few minutes later he sagged panting against the alley wall.

While he had been a demon, he’d felt nothing like this, he had been a being of pure invincibility.

He let his forehead rest against the wall for a few more minutes before hauling himself tiredly to his feet.

He had to find the girls, let them know he was alright and double check to be sure that they were too.

He tried to feel their link through his corporal body, but it only made him wince with the increasing throbbing of his head.

Leaning back against the wall he massaged his temples as if it would help his brain move any faster.

He gave an uncomfortable shiver.

Was it getting colder already?

He began gathering trash around the alley in an old garbage bin.

When it was about halfway filled, he pushed it into the new alcove that Bronstein had made with the wall.

He dug a match out of his pocket, struck it, and watched the refuse catch.

When the blaze had begun to make a steady stream of oily dark smoke, he began moving again.

Slowly and deliberately he transformed back into his demon, worried somewhat at the amount of effort it was taking.

When he had completely decoalesced, it was an uncharacteristic relief.

His weak and achy body was replaced with the ferociously limitless power that had often scared him.

He felt out the direction his sisters had taken, there was no specific area that they would flee to in the event Credence was captured.

Without definite knowledge of their exact location, he couldn’t give them away in the event that he was tortured.

He followed the billowing smoke straight up in an almost lazy ascension, doing his best to look like he was a part of the real smoke, innocuous and entirely random.

He continued slowly up until he reached the cloud cover and then set out in a vaguely western direction.

That was where he found himself ten or so minutes later, hovering around Central Park.

Chastity usually chose places like this, places with enough traffic, but with enough places that they could land with few witnesses.

He could feel the girls in the general area of the park and was looking for an empty space to land when he saw him.

He was just standing there looking out over the empty park. How did he know that he and the girls were here?

Credence dropped quickly and quietly into the empty area of the park, holding himself as tightly as he could, never taking his eyes off the man only a hundred or so feet away.

He watched as the man straightened and began looking around.

Credence knew he’d been noticed.

He watched as the man took out his wand and moved into a defensive position, continuously looking around.

When his back had been turned from Credence’s position for a few seconds, Credence made his move.

*********************************************************************************

Percival Graves turned just in time to see a black cloud, looking like fury itself, slam into him and send his body flying.

Heat, ungodly heat, burned its way over and around him until his trajectory took it out of the thing’s path and he slammed into the ground.

His brain spun wildly within his head as he tried to push himself up off the ground, only to be slammed down again over and over, burning waves of heat passing over him with each strike.

He felt his wand get pulled away from his fingers and in the back of his brain he knew he probably wasn’t going to survive whatever this onslaught was.

When he thought he couldn’t take one more savage pass he heard a scream.

Instantly the darkness fell away and the late afternoon light flooded his vision.

He lay on the ground in the fetal position, vainly trying to cover his head while his legs had tucked themselves into his chest.

When another attack didn’t come he cautiously lifted his head to get a better look around.

In front of him stood a homeless woman with her arms outspread.

Her back was to him and she was screaming at something that was a little ways away.

Gingerly, he uncoiled himself to get a better look, his eyes flickering around the ground for any trace of his wand.

He turned his attention to the woman trying to understand what she was saying. He peered around the woman and felt his jaw drop.

There, not fifteen feet away was an Obscurus.

Scratch that, it was a truly enormous Obscurus.

It could only be one of the four that had demolished half of New York a week before he’d be found.

Slowly his hearing began trickling back into his ears and he began to comprehend what the woman was saying.

“It’s not him, do you hear me?!?” she screamed. By the sound of her voice he could tell she was crying.

“This man looks like him and even has a similar posture, but dammit it’s not him! Credence please, please listen to me.

There has to be another explanation, he doesn’t even smell like Graves!” Despite being covered in burns, Percival straightened completely up at that.

What the hell was going on?

The “How do you know my name?” came out of his mouth of its own volition before he could stop it.

The woman turned abruptly around to stare at him, her face screwed up with agitation and fear.

Graves was wrong, she wasn’t a woman at all, hell she couldn’t have been older than fifteen.

When her attention had turned to him, the Obscurus lunged forward, its impressive length stretching out.

Without missing a beat Graves snatched the girl’s hand and curled his body around hers, vainly trying to keep her from the burning cloud.

To his surprise the thing whipped around the two of them before flowing into the spot it had been occupying only moments before.

Graves quickly shoved the girl behind him and got into a crouch trying to keep the things attention.

To his surprise however the creature hadn’t moved again except to gently whip back and forth between two trees.

Graves spied his wand fifteen feet away between him and the Obscurus.

“Hey miss” he whispered to the girl behind him.

“I’m going to make a break for my wand right there.

When I do, I want you to run the other way and don’t stop. Got it?”

He felt her rise into a standing position behind him.

“No wait, not yet!” he hissed in panic.

She walked around his right side placing an overly warm hand on his shoulder as she passed.

He watched her as she slowly walked over to the Obscurus, hands slightly raised in a placating gesture.

Graves watched in horror as the closer she got, the more smoke seemed to rise up over her arms.

As she seemed to come more and more apart the opposite seemed to be happening to the other Obscurus.

The cloud began shrinking and turning into itself, its great mass winding down until the slim shape of a young man could be made out.

Graves’s position wobbled and he flopped onto his backside as the two creatures walked forward until they were inches from one another.

The girl lifted her hands to cup the older boy’s face.

The boy leaned down until he had the girl wrapped in both his arms.

From this distance (or maybe it was his damaged hearing) he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it was obvious they were both crying.

He glanced over at movement to the left of the pair.

Two girls began climbing out of one of the massive oaks that ringed the clearing.

At a gesture from the older girl they both remained near the trunk.

The two older children had entirely coalesced at this point and were now looking at Graves sitting in the grass.

Without any visible agreement, they both came towards Graves slowly, almost shyly.

The girl lifted her hands again into the placating gesture, as if Graves were the savage creature and not them.

When they were ten feet away they both stopped.

The silence between them dragged out as both sides looked over the other.

Graves took in both the children’s skeletal frames, filthy hair and clothes, and hunted expressions.

He wondered what they were assessing from him.

The girl whispered to the boy “See what I mean?

If it was really him, he would have had us already.

Besides this one looks a little different too, he’s skinnier and his hair is different.”

The boy looked a great deal less sure than the girl did.

He continued to squint and rake Graves over with his eyes, as if trying to take in every detail.

Graves felt fury and disgust blooming within his heart and stomach.

His sluggish brain had finally caught up to the obviousness of the situation.

They had mistaken him for fucking Grindelwald.

The three girls had been watching him for who knew how long, assessing and following.

The brother must have seen him and attacked, either to give the girls a chance to get away or to take revenge out on him.

Possibly a little bit of both.

What had the monster done to these kids?

Had he found some way to make Obscurials like the rumors had said?

Had he collected these kids and then decided to let them loose on the unsuspecting public?

He realized that the boy had his teeth bared and the girl had adopted a worried expression.

He did his best to relax the expression on his face that had undoubtedly set them to worry.

“Are either of you willing to hear me out?” he asked tiredly.

God, he just wanted to sleep.

The girl nodded and moved closer, the boy on her heels.

She ended up sitting a few feet away, tugging her skirt around her knees modestly.

The boy remained stubbornly standing until the girl reached up and yanked on his arm.

He must have been putting on a front of toughness Graves thought as the boy nearly faceplanted into the ground.

He looked about as exhausted as Graves felt.

“Can I ask you to completely hear me out before you, uh, try and kill me again.”

The girl blushed and looked away while the boy only glowered.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other two girls climb back up their tree.

The other two Obscurials he thought. How many of them were there?

His eyes flicked to an impatient gesture from the boy.

Graves drew in a steadying breath and thought about where to begin.

“My name is Percival Graves.”

The boy gave a snarl and made a move to lean forward.

The girl put a hand on his chest and gave him a little shove back.

Graves took this as his cue to continue.

“About seven months ago, a dark wizard from Europe by the name of Grindelwald escaped the custody of several British aurors and fled to New York.

Within a month of his arrival he had killed three of our city’s best aurors and… and… .”

He trailed off, having difficulty admitting that he was evidently responsible for what had happened later.

For probably what had happened to these kids. For God knew how many other kids.

Why hadn’t he been faster that night?

He couldn’t even remember what pointless thought had filled his mind so much that he had failed to notice the man coming up behind him.

Even after he’d been imprisoned why hadn’t he tried harder to get out?

Why hadn’t he been better?

How had he fucked up so colossally?

He flinched when he felt a small hand on his arm.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. Just breath, its ok”.

He felt one hand move to his back while the other moved to his chest.

Percival realized how long it had been since he had actually breathed.

He pulled air into his lungs and was momentarily dizzy from the rush.

The darkness that had gone unnoticed until now receded and he saw the girl looking at him with blatant concern.

Not pity, just concern all over her dirty face.

She took a deep breath and let it out.

He felt the hand on his back move away and saw her gesture at him to keep breathing.

When he continued breathing she took her other hand away and gave him an understanding smile.

He nearly returned the smile when the boy snaked his arm around the girl’s waist and tugged her back beside him.

Although the boy was no longer looking at him with hostility, it was obvious he still didn’t trust him.

The girl tried to gently push his arm away but failed.

She made a small exasperated noise and gestured for Graves to continue.

He wasn’t sure what he had done to win her over.

He had a feeling she might be reading more into him than through just the conversation.

Was she possibly a Legilimens?

“Yeah, sorry.” he murmured as he passed a hand through his mussed hair.

“Well the wizard I mentioned earlier, Grindelwald, wanted an “in” at MACUSA.

He… abducted me and kept me prisoner in the basement of the apartment underneath part of my house.

He uh, kept me there for five months.

Unbeknownst to me, he had stolen my identity, my home, my job, everything.

And nobody noticed.

He was just that good at copying me, I guess”.

Graves pushed down the bitter feeling as he continued.

“At some point one of my aurors and a British friend of hers figured out what was going on and tried to stop him.

It took them a few days to capture him, but eventually they called in MACUSA and successfully captured him.

Apparently, they only succeeded because Grindelwald lost control over a group of Obscurials who tore half of New York to pieces.”

He glanced up at the watching faces.

The girl had a hand over her mouth with a horrified expression on her face.

The boy had gone pale under all the dirt and had pulled the girl closer toward him.

Graves thought belatedly that he might have gone a little far with that last bit, judging by their reactions.

Several No-Majs had been hurt of course, but no one had actually died.

He knew very little about Obscurials, as they had been reduced to a mostly legendary status, before Grindelwald had apparently let four of them loose.

What he did know was that they had absolutely no control over the parasitic force that took them until it eventually killed them.

He also knew that they never broke the age of ten.

These kids were apparently exceptions to those rules, at least part of the time anyway.

Graves felt the silence stretch into awkwardness.

The boy nudged the girl.

“Well?” he prompted quietly.

The girl took her hand away from her face and nodded.

Graves felt guilty, he didn’t know these kids, didn’t know anything about them.

Who the hell was he to judge them?

“I have a question sir, if you don’t mind.” asked the boy, speaking to Graves for the first time.

Graves looked at the boy and nodded.

He’s so scrawny he thought.

“Grindelwald, the other witch with your face?” he asked.

Graves felt his face give a twitch.

“Is he dead?”.

The boy’s face had an almost hopeful cast to it.

“Ah… no”. Graves replied.

He continued quickly when the boy’s face darkened.

“But he is in MACUSA custody, they plan on shipping him back to England in a few weeks.

He’s dangerous enough to warrant a good deal of security.

They plan on shipping him out in a few weeks.”

The boy huffed out a wry laugh that turned into a wracking cough.

The girl looked at him concern plain on her face, but he waved her off as he got his breath back.

Graves leaned back and winched at the burns on his back.

The girl’s head whipped around to face him, her concerned deepening.

“Let me get those”.

She skootched forward on her knees and took his left arm before he could say anything.

The lines of her hands blurred and darkened slightly as she gently traced the burns on his skin.

As she moved her fingers along the edges of each wound, the flesh tingled and itched.

Graves watched with more than a little awe as each pass of her fingers closed the burns, leaving only smaller pink lines behind.

He watched her as she went from arm to arm, shoulder to back, and chest to knee.

She gently ran her fingers over the bridge of his nose and along his jaw.

She seemed to feel the aches from his impact with the ground as well, pressing them gently with her palms.

Graves felt the muscles jump slightly then ease as she took her hands away.

“Anywhere else?” she asked.

He shook his head, he hadn’t even let the healers in the hospital ward get that close.

Was this something that was unique to Obscurials?

She apparently noticed the closeness between the two of them and scooted back.

“So, what now sir?” asked the boy.

“Do you bring us to your MACUSA?”.

The question stumped Graves.

What was he going to do?

He knew as an auror, as Director, he should bring the kids into headquarters.

The thought however repulsed him.

Yeah, the boy had nearly murdered him, but in all honesty what would he have done if he had seen Grindelwald walking through the park?

He thought about what the dark wizard had done to him.

He could only imagine what he had done to these kids.

And, he thought to himself, he was still technically on leave.

Technically, he wasn’t even an auror right now.

Besides, what would happen to the kids once MACUSA got them?

The idea of them poking and prodding at them as if they were animals made his stomach turn.

He smiled thinly.

“If you didn’t see me, maybe I didn’t see you?

How could I show my face at work if everyone knew I had gotten my ass handed to me by a bunch of kids?”.

The boy relaxed slightly while the corner of his mouth twitched into a ghostly half smile.

He stood up slowly along with the girl.

He held out a hand to Graves and helped pull him to his feet.

He shook Graves’ hand a little shyly.

“Credence Barebone” he said.

“Percival Graves” he replied a wry smile tugging at his mouth.

The girl held out her hand to be shook as well “Chastity Barebone”.

Graves took her hand but instead of shaking it, he turned it palm down and lightly kissed the back.

“Lady Healer” he said with a grin.

Chastity blushed and looked away shyly, subtly moving to stand slightly behind Credence.

“Sorry for, for earlier” said Credence also showing his own nervousness.

“When I'm…” he gestured vaguely across himself “I don’t always think like I should”.

Graves nodded and gave a small dismissive gesture.

He thought back to when he had smashed all the dishes in his kitchen only a few weeks ago, the shame he had felt as he had repaired them.

His eyes flicked to the oak where the other two girls had been.

To his surprise he saw them both walking toward them.

The taller of the two had to have been around eleven or so.

The other was around nine and blonde like Chastity.

The older of the two girls, the redhead, held out his wand handle first.

“Glad you don’t plan on killing us or anything like that” she said grinning.

Graves couldn’t help staring after that.

The girl’s smile was genuine however and he smiled back reflexively.

“How did that Grindelwald guy steal your face?

Does that mean that you could steal his face if you wanted to?”.

Credence looked horrified as he pulled her closer so that she stood right in front of him.

An unspoken conversation seemed to have passed between the two of them because the girl grew a chastised look.

Graves chuckled nervously, “Regular firecracker huh?”

Credence nodded “This” he gave the girl a tiny shake “Is my sister Temperance”.

The other girl walked up and stood beside Chastity.

“And this is Modesty”.

The youngest didn’t speak, but watched Graves carefully, as if she expected him to do something dangerous at any moment.

He didn’t blame her for her outlook.

He took in the sight of the four of them.

All four were painfully thin and extremely dirty.

Although they seemed cheerful enough at the moment, all four bore a hunted look that twisted his heart a little unexpectedly.

He’d seen homeless kids before, he lived in New York after all, and he’d often given many of them money.

These kids however had the look of fugitives on the run.

Credence broke through his interior monologue.

“Well sir, it is getting late.”

He didn’t seem to know how else to continue and Graves didn’t blame him.

“Yes”, he agreed awkwardly.

“I’ll be seeing all of you then”.

Credence nodded and began nudging his sisters away.

Graves gave an awkward wave as they left.

As he turned and began walking into the encroaching gloom, he heard Temperance call out “Catch you on the flipside!!” with a giggle as they disappeared.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why, but I really like staring out with my Barebone babies and finishing up with Graves everytime.

When they had put a good distance between Graves (the real Graves!) the four Barebone children quickly made their way towards their favorite tree in the park.

When they arrived at the massive tree, Chastity pushed Credence towards the trunk, gesturing to go first.

He was so bone tired that he barely resisted before laboriously hauling himself up into the thick branches.

Even though he was thoroughly exhausted, climbing the tree wasn’t all that difficult due to the numerous knobby hand holds that conveniently covered the trees surface.

A few moments later Credence heaved himself into the center of the tree.

Credence guessed that the tree was either a foreign species of some kind or had originally been three or more trees that had grown together in their adolescence.

The result of whatever had happened to the tree had created a massive bowl made from the six great limbs that jutted oddly from the trunk.

As the tree had aged, the limbs had grown so close that they had melded seamlessly together before spreading out.

Considering that magic actually existed in the world, the likelihood that the tree was magic seemed entirely plausible.

As he slid down the smooth side of the inner bowl, he saw Modesty come up over the opposite side.

She slid down gracefully (despite wearing a dress) and came to a stop directly in front of Credence, her small nose twitching and her eyes searching his.

With a movement that she could have only learned from Chastity, she laid her hand over Credence’s forehead.

Knowing what she was trying to do, Credence leaned back in an attempt to dislodge her.

Modesty expected this however and leaned forward at the same time, following his movement.

Credence had to brace himself against the side as she removed her hand, closed the distance between them, and put her lips right where her hand had been.

Credence gave an involuntary shiver at the chillness of Modesty’s extremities, knowing the likelihood that she was cold was rather unlikely.

He watched as Modesty pulled back, her face in its characteristic blankness.

Without pushing into their link, he had absolutely no idea what she was thinking.

Credence knew the reason for her expressionlessness wasn’t from a lack of thought or intelligence.

He knew and understood that it was part of who she was, part of her defense against the rest of the world.

Considering what they had been through and her young age, Credence didn’t hold it against her.

He looked up as Chastity and Temperance made their way into the center of the bowl, scooching until they were on either side of Modesty.

“About forty-five more minutes till full dark, then we can start heading to the library” said Chastity in an attempt to break the apparent tension.

Temperance leaned forward excitedly “Yeah, plenty of time to tell us what happened! What happened in the alley? Did you get Bronstein? Is he dead, I hope he’s dead!”

Temperance’s thin face was lit up with a morbid sort of hope that could still be made out in the dying light.

“Temperance!” admonished Chastity in a severe tone.

“We do not wish that people were dead! No matter what they’ve done, that is not something you should wish on anyone!”

Temperance hung her head at the rebuke and turned away.

Credence knew she didn’t like to upset Chastity, but Temperance had such a wild spirit at times it was hard for her to act respectable.

He could remember a time when they were a great deal younger, when Chastity had been very much of the same spirit.

Before Mary Lou had beaten it out of her.

Hating to see Temperance’s rather macabre happiness taken away, he said “He got away”.

Temperance looked back his way.

He couldn’t keep the grin off his face however when he said “But not before I took off about half of his arm!”.

Temperance grinned back in response, but not before giving Chastity as sidelong glance.

Chastity had her eyes raised skyward and an exasperated look on her face.

Credence knew she was praying for guidance.

Did God answer the prayers of demons?

Temperance had a firm belief in justice.

In her opinion, many of the world’s evil men deserved to die.

Credence was of a like opinion, he just didn’t want to be the one always dealing out that kind of justice.

Modesty changed the subject unexpectedly; she didn’t often speak outside the link.

“Credence, you’re sick.” Chastity’s attention snapped back to Credence sharply.

He could feel her pressing at the boundary of his mind through the link.

Normally he would have let her in, but his head was hurting too much at the moment to try.

“I’ll be fine” he said right before breaking into a coughing fit.

When the coughs finally subsided a minute later, Credence sagged back against the tree, exhausted.

“You are absolutely not fine” said Chastity as she placed a frigid hand across his brow.

“Credence, oh, you’re burning up! Why didn’t you say anything? Is this why you’ve kept your link closed?”

The look of worry and guilt on her face made Credence’s stomach knot itself up.

He knew she would feel responsible that she hadn’t taken better care of him.

“Because Chastity, it wouldn’t make a difference. I’m either going to get better or I’m not.”

Chastity’s face held a horrified expression.

“But we have a little bit of emergency money! We could have gotten you to a doctor before now!”.

Credence sighed, “Chastity, that money is barely enough to buy a hot dog with, and besides no doctor would even treat me. We’re not human anymore. Besides, what if he did treat me Chastity? What if he was able to see what was wrong with me, then took me away to some hospital to study me?”

Chastity flinched at the idea, but Temperance growled angrily. “Let them try”.

Chastity waved her off distractedly before saying, “Credence, we have to at least try, what happens if you get too sick? What would happen if we lose the link to you? Would we…” she trailed off, tears shining in her eyes through the near darkness.

“Would we go back to how we were before?” finished Modesty.

It was Credence’s turn to flinch at that.

The memories of them mindlessly tearing through the city were horrible to say the least.

He leaned his head back against the wall of tree limbs behind him and closed his eyes.

The difficultness of the situation had tears of frustration pricking at his eyes.

“We could ask Mr. Graves for help”, said Modesty in a low voice.

Credence didn’t open his eyes as he shook his head.

“We don’t even know this one. That, and I just tried to kill him”.

“You weren’t looking in his mind like I was”, said Modesty.

“He’s a good person and probably would help us, even if he scares me a little.”

Credence shared a look with Chastity before the two of them looked at Modesty.

“What about him scares you?”

Modesty’s brow furrowed slightly in concentration as she mulled the question over.

Her eyes slid over to him and he felt her push at his mental barrier.

Feeling an impending kind of dread, he let out a resigned sigh and let down his walls.

As he let her in he felt the other two girls gently push their way in as well.

The exchange of information wasn’t as effortless as it usually was on Credence’s part.

He grimaced in pain as the rush of stimulation from all three of his sisters exacerbated the pain in his head.

He didn’t push them out however, the need for understanding was worth the pain.

From Chastity, he saw her momentary struggle with the man in the alley before Temperance had leaped between them and slammed his head into the brick wall three times.

He felt their reaction to his part of the memory.

“He’s dead”? they both asked.

Temperance felt grim satisfaction while Chastity felt horror tinged with sadness.

“No one deserves to die in a dirty alley” she thought while Temperance’s thoughts hissed “He was a rapist, Modesty felt what he wanted to do to you!”.

Chastity withdrew some and Credence brushed her thoughts to reassure her, and reminded her that it was over.

He relayed the rest of what he had done as he felt the influx of information that Modesty had been waiting to send him.

He felt and saw his sisters sitting on a park bench, Modesty noticing Graves, the three of them hiding and watching.

He felt Modesty lightly running through Graves’ mind, her touch lighter than a feather as she examined his surface thoughts and feelings; how very different they were from the other Graves.

Grindelwald, they knew his real name now, had hurt more people than just them.

Through Temperance, Credence smelled the difference in scents that the two men had, their difference in stride and posture.

The three girls felt Credence’s love that drove his desire to kill Graves, his desire to keep them safe and away from harm.

Credence felt Graves’ emotions third hand through Modesty’s memory like a swallow of weak and stale tea.

He felt what made her nervous about his personality, his occasionally mindless drive to see projects through, his fierce wish to create rightness in the world.

He felt how those traits endeared him to Temperance’s likeminded beliefs and her curiosity at how to accomplish them like he had.

He felt Chastity’s desire to help an injured soul, one that had been hurt like they had, hurt by the same man.

He felt the damage within Graves’ body as Chastity had healed more than just the burns that he had inflicted.

He experienced Modesty’s intense curiosity about the situation between the real Graves and Grindelwald.

He felt his own desire for a friend.

Graves’ fear at never being the same again.

Chastity’s worry about him now.

Temperance’s concern at his rapid breathing.

Modesty quickly withdrawing their links from his mind as it began spinning out of control.

He felt Chastity catch him as he sagged sideways against the tree wall.

She gently pulled him until he had twisted around with his head in her lap.

“Oh Credence”, she murmured as she stroked his hair.

He kept his eyes shut as he brought his mind back to order, fighting his nausea.

They stayed like that for a long while, completely silent, thinking about how their world was constantly shaken.

Credence didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until Chastity gently shook him awake.

“Let’s go home”, she whispered.

**********************************************************************

Graves watched until the kids were out of sight before aparating back home.

He stood in his living room, looking around at his rather lavish living space.

He could feel his mouth set in a grimace as he thought of his behavior over the past weeks.

Yeah, he had been through hell and torture, but he had somewhere to call home.

He had a roof over his head, food in his kitchen, and several places to sleep.

With a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan, he flopped tiredly onto one of the leather couches against the wall.

He gave an automatic wince as he hit the cushions, expecting the residual pain of his previous ordeal in addition to the day’s trauma to raise protests throughout his body.

But it was barely there.

He waited, expecting a flare up at any moment.

With dawning comprehension, he realized that the girl, Chastity, must have healed more than just the day’s injuries.

The kindness of it floored him again and he felt his eyes prick suspiciously.

Those poor kids.

How could something so horrible happen once, let alone four times?

How did four children with such obvious power go unnoticed for so long?

How had they survived for so long?

It was almost too horrible to consider, what if there were more of them?

He shuddered reflexively at the thought, the memory of Credence’s fury still bright in his mind.

What had happened to make four Obscurials, four tame Obscurials?

Graves felt the grimace pull at his face again.

Magical experimentation.

The thought was sickening, but it was the most likely explanation.

He knew he should really contact the aurors at headquarters, but the idea was still repulsive.

The Committee for Magical Irregularities would tear those kids to pieces.

If the kids didn’t tear them to pieces first.

With a start, Graves realized that he was in his kitchen, halfway through making a sandwich.

He had been so focused on the problem at hand, his body simply went on without him and decided to fill his stomach.

Unfortunately, this had been a habit before his run-in with Grindelwald, now it was a serious safety issue.

He needed to keep enough track of himself to realize where and what he was doing!

In an effort to keep himself grounded, he angrily finished making the sandwich and haphazardly threw the ingredients back into the pantry.

As he began eating he walked to the bathroom by the guest rooms (the other one was only accessible through his bedroom) and turned on the taps in the shower.

As they heated he finished wolfing the sandwich down before stripping.

Before getting in the shower, he forced himself to look into the mirror.

His body was still far from the one he remembered.

There were the scars of course, but the body beneath them was still pale and wasted.

Percival had never been what you would call “muscle bound”, but he had always retained the lean muscular appearance that was the trade mark of all the Graves’ men.

Now he looked enough like one of those kids that he could have been homeless himself.

With a last disgusted look, Graves got into the shower and began scrubbing himself vigorously, as if he could wash away the reflection.

_I need to keep this from happening to anyone else._

When he was done, he tied a towel around his waist, dumped his clothes into the hamper and trudged into the guest bedroom.

He plunked his wallet on the bedside table, but kept his wand with him as he flopped onto the bed.

With a shiver at the rooms temperature, he tugged the duvet around him and burrowed deep inside.

He was on the edge of sleep when the image of Credence’s face popped into his mind.

Poor kid, he thought.

He considered the four of them, their dirty and scrawny faces, the obvious fear that hung over them.

He thought of his duty to MACUSA and knew how Seraphina would rage if she knew he had met all four Obscurials and just let them go.

He needed to find out more.

More about who they were, where they were staying, and how had they been involved with Grindelwald.

He winced again at the memory of their emaciated bodies.

God, he could have at least given them some money or _something_.

At least pay Chastity back for whatever she had done to him.

He growled at himself and wriggled deeper into the duvet, as if he could escape his shame.

_Tomorrow_ he thought a few minutes later as he began to drift off again.

Tomorrow he would go out and try to find them.

With a last image of Credence’s shy smile in his mind, Graves finally fell asleep.

When he woke later he was surprised to see it was nearly eleven o’clock.

He hadn’t slept this long since before his “internment” and wondered whether it was due to the exhaustion of the previous day or something Chastity had done.

He rolled out of bed and stretched, feeling only some of the usual pain that was left over from his internment.

Whatever Chastity had done to him, it was wonderful.

Remembering the promise he had made to himself, Graves hurried through his morning ablutions, got dressed and went into his kitchen.

Once there he took out the knapsack that was at the bottom of the kitchen closet and shook the dust from it.

It had been a long time since he'd used it, and even longer since he’d taken it camping.

After seeing that it was still in relatively good condition, he made himself another sandwich and then made several more.

While he ate his ham and cheese he packed the sandwiches into the bag along with what little edible food that remained in his pantry.

He looked at the small pile tucked into the knapsack and for the first time wished he was better at charms, food charms to be precise.

He could remember his grandmother, as fierce as she was, whipping up a three-course meal for ten in the blink of an eye.

He felt a pang of sadness, for the first time in many years, missing that fierce old woman.

He knew she wouldn’t have let those kids leave last night.

She would have undoubtedly brought them home and fed them, and in the morning went out and murdered Grindelwald with her bare hands.

Reaffirming his actions with her memory, he made his way out the door, his stride purposeful for the first time in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me what you guys think! Like let me have it, don't be shy!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to get out, please excuse the tardiness!

Transforming had been painful for Credence as they left the park, but he told himself it would be worth it once they got home.

The whole time they flew home his sisters had kept themselves in an extremely tight formation around him, despite his attempts to nudge them over.

As they came within sight of the library Credence allowed himself to feel relief at the idea of being able to sleep.

When they got closer however, Temperance broke formation and streaked forward.

Through the thread thin link he allowed them, he smelled what his sister had picked up, the smell of a stranger.

She began whipping violently around the second floor, knocking over loose boards, and sending an old ladder flying.

At a closer look he saw the additional reason for Temperance’s flight of fury.

The little corner in which they usually slept had been completely ransacked.

Their meager pile of blankets had been shredded and burned with only tiny scraps of material left behind.

Chastity coalesced herself and made her way to the loose board above which they had usually slept, checking on their cache of belongings.

Modesty began blocking Temperance’s vehement destruction of the library, slowly backing her into a corner.

Credence held himself low to the floor, retaining his smoky body, knowing that if he reformed his corporeal body, he likely wouldn’t be able to change back.

Chastity let out and anguished wail as she wrenched up the scorched plank.

He didn’t need her to tell him what he had already guessed, their precious space was empty.

Their money, their tiny bit of food, gone.

Chastity began sobbing loudly, dropping the board to wrap her arms around her knees.

Two thumps sounded in the far corner as the other two girls melded themselves together and landed on the floor.

Both made their way over to Chastity and wrapped themselves around her shaking body.

Credence made a ring around the three of them, drawing as close as he could.

Several minutes later, Chastity pulled Modesty and Temperance into her arms, putting kisses on both girl’s temples.

She looked up into the ink and fire of Credence’s demon and asked “Plan B?”.

She didn’t wait for an answer however as she pulled the others to their feet.

Together the three decoalesced and rose with Credence, heading out toward the river.

When they reached it hours later they made their way to an old, but still used warehouse.

All four siblings carefully passed through the weathered hole in the roof and made their way to the rarely used third floor nook they had made on their first visit.

They had stayed there only a short time though, the distance from easily available food had been too great.

When they had left those few months ago, they had taken their few possessions with them, leaving the place as bare as it was now.

The three girls folded themselves into their human bodies before Credence did, watching him tensely.

Girding himself for the inevitable unpleasantness that was coming, Credence slowly coalesced his body together.

The exact moment he was completely solid, he fell to his knees and began retching emptily.

When his heaving finally stopped, he tried sitting back on his heels, but fell sideways into Modesty.

The three girls laid him on his back in the corner.

The younger two watched as Chastity put her hands first on his face, then his chest.

They both continued watching as Chastity’s hands darkened and blurred as she tried healing whatever was wrong with him.

She stopped however when her stomach gave a loud growl that Temperance’s own stomach answered angrily.

Chastity looked at the two of them, her hopeless expression easily one the most frightening things they had ever seen.

Modesty leaned forward and put her hand against Chastity’s cheek, using her connection through the link to send Chastity to sleep.

Together the two youngest girls laid their older sister down beside their brother.

Temperance knew that Modesty abhorred that kind of contact, but didn’t say anything.

Modesty began undoing the buttons on Credence’s shirt and, somewhat baffled, Temperance began helping.

Together they maneuvered the shirt off of their brother, tugging it off of him as gently as possible.

Modesty folded up the ratty garment and tucked it under his head.

“He’s too hot” she sent through the link.

Pass that obvious fact, neither of them knew enough to have any idea of what to do next.

Credence began shivering as they watched him.

Out of options, both girls curled up between their siblings and went to sleep.

Chastity woke late the next morning, staring at the ceiling of the warehouse in a state of mild confusion.

As she lay there however she remembered Modesty using her own ability against her, forcing her into sleep.

She pulled herself up and looked over at Modesty’s sleeping form.

How afraid had Modesty been to put her to sleep like that?

She resented the fact the she had been put to sleep by her younger sister, but didn’t hold it against Modesty really.

She knew she had been on the edge of hysteria.

Slowly and gently extricating herself from Temperance’s skinny arms, she scooched around to Credence and reached out to feel his forehead.

Before she reached his skin though, his eyes snapped open.

Chastity hopped back with a squeak of surprise, hands flying up to cover her mouth.

Credence gave her a mock scowl and put his finger to his lips in a silencing gesture.

She stared at him, her heart still pounding.

He stuck his tongue out at her playfully before gently moving Modesty over so that he could sit up.

He ran a hand through his sweat damp hair and watched as Chastity inched closer toward him.

He didn’t resist when she put her cold hand against his forehead.

“Still too high”, she mouthed at him. He nodded, expecting as much.

“What are we going to do now”, he mouthed back.

He felt her push tentatively at his mind, but he shook his head firmly.

“No, hurts too much”.

Temperance’s stomach growled loudly in her sleep.

Credence pointed at her. “That first”.

Chastity nodded and mouthed “Maybe if we all eat, I can try and work on bringing your fever down.”

Credence gave a noncommittal shrug. “I guess”.

He made a move, as if to get up, but Chastity growled at him.

Credence felt his eyebrows rise.

Chastity’s face was set halfway into a snarl.

“You stay here!”, she mouthed angrily, giving him a mental shove for emphasis.

He groaned involuntarily as the pain in his head spiked.

He put a shaky hand to his head while the other raised itself in front of him in a placating gesture.

Chastity’s expression softened slightly, but she shook a finger at him threateningly.

Credence patted the air in front of him. “I’ll stay put”.

He pulled a dejected face and mouthed, “I don’t think I’d get very far anyway.”

Chastity watched him a few moments more, suspicion clear on her face.

Credence crossed his heart dramatically while crossing his eyes.

He saw the corner of her mouth twist up and knew he had won.

He watched as Chastity moved over and began gently rousing his other two sisters.

A few minutes later he was watching as all three slipped quietly out the crack in the broken outer door.

As soon as they were gone, he leaned back against the wall tiredly.

With a shiver he began tugging his shirt back on over his undershirt.

That done, he laid back on the hard floor.

He wondered again if God answered the prayers of demons.

In the event that he did, Credence prayed that his sisters would be safe.

***********************************************************************

Percival felt the hopelessness of his mission rather acutely as he wandered Central Park for the third time.

While he was a far cry from giving up, he really didn’t know where to start looking.

He had asked every hot dog vender and street performer that would talk to him.

Even with the added bonus of bribes no one seemed to know, or really care about a handful of homeless kids.

Annoyed at the thought of how uncaring No-Majs tended to be, he made another circuit around a small pond.

He was about to call the park quits when he noticed the Chinese man from the previous day.

He hurried toward the man, making an effort not to mow down the other pedestrians in his hurry.

As it turned out, the man only seemed to understand about half of what Graves what saying.

In the end the man only smiled and shook his head.

“Sorry. Don’t know.”

Trying to keep the bitterness from his face, rather unsuccessfully, and had turned to leave when a voice said, “Skinny couple of kids? A boy, three girls?”.

Graves whirled around to see a man and a little girl standing in the crowd.

The man was large, heavily built with a rough cast that made him seem rather intimidating.

The little girl was tiny by comparison, maybe seven years old, and had a pink balloon tied to her wrist.

Even though they were mismatched in size, there was enough similarity in their features for them to be related.

Graves nodded and came a little closer, mentally counting out how much No-Maj money was still in his wallet.

The man and the little girl were dressed in what looked like their Sunday best, rather at odds with the man’s harsh features.

“It’s my birthday!”, blurted out the little girl, giving Percival a wide grin that showed off an absent bottom tooth.

Reflexively, Graves grinned back.

Why were children affecting him this way?

A year ago Graves had little interest or patience for them.

A year ago he wouldn’t have smiled back.

The big man shifted a little, bringing Graves’ attention back to him.

Graves nodded to the man again, waiting for him to elaborate.

The man eyed Graves, sizing him up and searching his eyes.

Graves stood still while keeping eye contact when it was given.

A few moments later the man apparently found whatever it was he was looking for.

“You know the warehouse district, down by the river?” he asked.

Graves nodded keeping any eagerness from his face.

“You see them every now and again, dark haired boy and three girls. I think they was sleeping there, always saw them in the early morning, y’know?”

Graves kept a tight grip on the hope that was trying to bloom in his chest.

“Why you looking for them, anyway?” the man asked.

Graves opened his mouth, then closed it again.

On the one hand this wasn’t anyone’s business but his.

On the other hand however, he had been at a relative dead end a few minutes ago.

Best to keep it simple he thought.

“I owe them something”, he said trying to find the appropriate turn of phrase.

He shrugged the rucksack for emphasis.

“They’ve done something for me, and if I don’t at least try and pay them back, it’s just going to keep eating at me until I do”.

The big man’s eyes searched his.

“Alright”, he said.

“You know that old warehouse, the big red one, where they keep most of the cotton shipments?”.

Graves shook his head to say no, but the man continued anyway.

“Nobody goes in there all that much unless they’re moving the freight, right? I’m thinking the kids are staying in there, cuz its quiet. The only reason I saw them the first time was on account of me thinking that the warehouse had caught fire. Smoke everywhere, so I ran around the back to sees what caught fire, only there ain’t no fire. Just a bunch of kids digging through the garbage.”

He rubbed the back of his head and a rueful expression came over his face.

“They took off soon as they saw me of course. Felt bad though, so I tried talking to them the couple of other times I saw them.”

The man shrugged. “Always took off before I got too close.”

Graves waited to hear more, but the man was apparently done with his story.

It certainly fit what he knew about them.

He didn’t think that Credence would have a hideout that was overly obvious, but safety and availability of resources undoubtedly compromised them from time to time.

The fact that a No-Maj had seen the “smoke” of an Obscurial was a little unsettling though.

The man obviously wasn’t a wizard and he doubted that the man was a squib.

He put it out of his mind a minute later.

America was a melting pot after all, all sorts ended up here.

The man undoubtedly had to have had magical ancestry somewhere along the line.

Probably an enterprising wizard with a wandering eye.

With a jolt, Graves realized that the silence between him and the man had gotten to a rather awkward length.

He gave a slight, sheepish smile and tugged out his wallet.

He had halfway pulled up a few bills when the man said “No, I didn’t tell you anything cuz I wanted money.”

He looked at the darkening expression on the man’s face and put away his wallet, realizing the man was insulted.

An idea to save face on both sides popped into his head.

He gave the man a wink and dropped down till he was eye level with the little girl.

She was a cute kid, unlike many of the complete brats he’d seen before.

The fact that she had kept almost entirely quiet while he had talked with her father had won him over.

“Wanna see a magic trick for your birthday?”, he asked her.

She grinned enormously again, showing off her missing tooth.

“Yes please!”, she said in an excited rush.

“Now” he asked as he began moving his arms in a ridiculous and overly dramatic way, “What did you want for your birthday? Close your eyes and keep thinking it in your mind.”

By instinct Graves had already guessed the answer already and was working on it.

He continued to stall as the little girl said “Alright, got it!”.

Graves felt himself smile at the enraptured smile on her face.

“Alright now, hold out your hand”.

His grin widened as she thrust her hand out, but pulled her face away, eagerness and the unknown clearly at war.

He rolled his shoulders and said, “Now open your eyes!”.

The little girl opened one blue eye while the other squinted at him.

Both popped open wide as she saw the line of coins roll up his right palm, over his arm and shoulders, before making their way down his left arm.

When the coins got to his left middle finger, they rolled straight off into the girls waiting hand.

Graves nearly fell over as the girl began shrieking with excitement, apparently realizing what the coins were.

Twelve tokens for the carousel.

Her little hand clutching the coins, she began jumping up and down, sheer delight emanating from her.

Graves straightened up, his back popping in response to staying hunched over.

He looked over at the girl’s father, unsure of what kind of expression he was going to find there.

His worries were groundless however as he saw that the man was beaming just as happily as his daughter.

Graves noted absently that he was missing the same tooth as his daughter.

The man opened his mouth to say something when he was cut off by a loud call of “Esther, Jimmy!”.

The three of them turned to see a No-Maj woman hurrying over to them.

In one arm she held a chubby toddler, an angelic miniature of “Jimmy”.

In her other hand she held a precariously balanced pile of hot dogs.

Jimmy scooped the boy from the woman when she came within range and took two of the hotdogs out of her other hand.

Esther wasted no time in loudly showing her mother the handful of tokens, her mother nodding while she appraised Graves.

Seeing an opportunity to take his leave, Graves nodded to Jimmy and then to his wife.

Jimmy nodded back, conveying thanks and a wish for good luck in the gesture.

Graves turned on his heel and began making his way toward the bridge that would let him into the wizarding side of the park.

A thin man who had been reading a No-Maj newspaper behind where Graves had stood, glanced over the top to look at Graves’ retreating back.

When Jimmy and his family walked away towards the carousel, the man stood up and dropped the newspaper onto the bench.

With a slight smirk, he slowly made his way towards the wizarding half of the park, careful to stay well clear of Graves, but just close enough to keep him in sight.

When Percival went through the barrier, he found the other side moderately crowded with traffic walking both ways through the portal.

He nodded to a MACUSA wizard who he knew worked in the broom permit office.

He gave a polite smile to a witch who was the undersecretary of the house elf department.

Everyone who recognized him stared, most not even trying to hide the obviousness of their gaze.

Graves ground his teeth as he made his way through the crowd toward the low stone paddock that was separated for aparating.

He resisted the urge to just aparate right where he stood.

What was wrong with these people?

Everyone knew that Grindelwald was still locked away deep within MACUSA’s jail cells.

It was common knowledge at this point in time that Graves had been locked up and impersonated.

As much as Seraphina had tried to keep the whole fiasco as hushed as possible, it inevitably got told and retold a thousand times throughout the entire wizarding community.

Their society was just too small, too tight knit to have any semblance of privacy.

He heard a few witches twittering behind him.

“… how do we know it’s the real him?” “Real or not I’m staying well away, he gives me the creeps!”

Graves spun around angrily, and glared at the witches, who all startled back a few steps.

Contradictory to what he had just heard, the three of them had only been walking a few feet behind him.

He bared his teeth in a terrifying smile. “Ladies”.

The group huddled into themselves, all wide eyed and staring.

Feeling satisfaction at the looks on their faces, Graves spun on his heel and walked quickly to the paddock.

After this, the rest of the people near the entrance gave him a wide berth, allowing him to make his way unimpeded.

He could feel himself glowering as he passed park benches and families alike.

It wasn’t his fault if people didn’t have the good sense to leave him alone.

When he reached the paddock he waited in the short line that had queued up at the entrance.

In addition to being the preferred area of aparating, the paddock also held a large stone fireplace.

Complete with a decorated mantle and portrait of Seraphina herself, it would have fit in perfectly within his own home.

Graves watched as an attendant assisted a large family with several small children out of the fireplace, the green flames of the Floo network licking their heels.

When the family had finally extricated themselves from the paddock and the exasperated attendant, the line quickly shortened.

When the witch ahead of him had thoroughly disaparated, Graves took his turn at the center of the large square.

He thought of the grimy dock where he had spent three days on a stake out a few years prior.

He grinned slightly at the macabre memory.

The idiot they had been waiting for had ended up getting eaten by the very manticores he had been trying to smuggle into the city.

With a grim smile and a slight flick of his wand, Graves found himself there.

He nearly fell into the river as he alighted on the dock however, a large chunk of the wood apparently now absent.

He readjusted the bag on his back and set off between the warehouses, on the look for either a red building or a group of scruffy Obscurials.

After three hours however, Graves felt a little hopeless.

Just because Jimmy might have seen the kids here, didn’t mean they were here now.

New York was pretty big after all, they might have more than one hidey-hole.

He had found the red warehouse, but the place had been swarming with No-Maj workers pulling out huge crates of cargo.

He hadn’t been able to get too close, the foreman had kept shooting furtive glances his way, even with the disillusionment charm he had placed over himself.

How many latent magic No-Majs were there around here anyway?

He had debated whether to wait until they had left for the night to search the warehouse, or using his time to keep sweeping the rest of the docks.

He had chosen in the end to do both, sweeping back and forth through the alleyways between the warehouses, infrequently popping up to check on the dock workers.

In spite of the mild frustration at the lack of new leads, he felt pretty good.

It felt good to be on a case of some kind.

Being in an active investigation, of a sort, had kept the hand tremor down somewhat.

He looked at his left hand, the right gripped on his wand as usual, and saw that the tremor was slight compared to the spasm that it usually was.

As he rounded a corner between two warehouses he heard a loud wolf whistle.

He spun round to look at the ally to his right, the one he had decided not to check, and saw two girls on a pile of crates watching him.

He felt his heartrate pick up, it was the two younger girls!

He began walking towards them, but stopped three quarters of the way, sensing the sudden tension.

He looked over the two of them.

The youngest, Modesty, had an entirely blank look on her face as she appraised him.

The older girl, Temperance, was also looking him over.

Her expression however held a slight sneer and her body language was rather predatory.

He watched in abject horror as both sets of eyes became an opaque white.

Both girls cocked their heads to the left, like two alley cats hearing the same noise.

Temperance’s sneer deepened as she asked, “Mr. Graves, how the hell did you find us?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun, Dun, Dun! Its really not that bad, I just felt like leaving it kinda dramatic. Thank you all for the comments, any and all are sincerely appreciated!! ;D


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so super long chapter. I didn't want to break tradition and split the chapter into "two" singular chapters, so here we have this monstrosity. It kind of got out of hand, but I think I'm satisfied for now O.o
> 
> ps. I changed the format, tried making it look more normal!

Credence slept fitfully, dozing off and then starting awake whenever there was a loud slam or a yell, as the men below moved about. He didn’t move much, the fear of discovery gnawing at him incessantly.

He also worried about his sisters, how would they get to him if there was trouble?

He bit his arm in desperation as a bout of coughing threatened to explode out of him at any moment. He held his breath, but felt the coughs clawing their way through his chest. A loud crash followed by angry yells from far below made him jump, the coughing causing him to double over.

After a painful minute he flopped onto his back, panting, eyes streaming. He listened for any approaching foots steps, but thankfully didn’t hear any. As he lay there shivering, he could only hope the men downstairs left before he gave himself away.

 

Chastity and her sisters began a methodical search of the surrounding warehouses, moving as quickly and as quietly as they were able. Unfortunately, there was little to no food to be found. Most of the garbage bins where either empty or full of non-edibles.

Modesty had found a lost lunch pail early in the afternoon, but closer inspection revealed that the food inside was too far gone to be edible. After a few hours of searching they had decided to go back to the warehouse to check on Credence.

To their horror however, they found the warehouse to be a swarm of activity with men going back and forth, bringing out boxes. There were men walking around the entire building, making it impossible to get inside from any angle. They knew Credence was still inside, Modesty could feel him in there, but they were unable to get close enough to find out more. In the end their only option was to wait the men out and hope that Credence remained undiscovered.

The three sisters found a pile of crates alongside a storage shed that leaned against a dilapidated warehouse. They moved and stacked the crates into a pile that gave them an easy access to the roof of the building. From the roof they were able to continuously check the progress of the red warehouse’s workers.

Chastity insisted that they take a break from their search for food, on the half true pretext that they needed to keep an eye on the warehouse. The full truth was that she didn’t know how much farther she could walk. She was feeling dizzy and nauseous, but she knew she wasn’t getting sick like Credence.

_She was starving_.

Every tiny scrap of food they had found that day, she had given away to her younger siblings. Now her generousness was taking its toll.

She didn’t try to climb onto the roof via the crate pile, the likelihood that she’d get too dizzy and fall kept her from making the attempt. So instead she sat a quarter of the way up the pile while letting Modesty braid and then rebraid her hair.

While Modesty created increasingly outlandish styles, Chastity reread the battered medical book that she kept in her bag. Credence had found it a few years prior and had given it to her on her eleventh birthday. It had been in relatively good condition when Credence had found it abandoned on the trolley, and he had even found a blue ribbon to tie around it.

Mary Lou however had found the gesture infuriating. She had beaten Credence severely before locking him in his room and throwing the book out into the rain. After that, she lectured Chastity for hours about the evils of pride, desire, trying to live above one’s station, and the wrongness of individuality. Chastity had then gotten her own beating before she too was thrown in her room.

It had been Temperance who had saved the book later that night while Mary Lou had been out at a church meeting. The binding had been ruined by the rain, but the pages were surprisingly intact. Temperance and Modesty had painstakingly peeled apart each page and hid them while they had dried before tying the book back together with a few pieces of string.

It was Chastity’s most prized possession and it went with her everywhere. She had lost count of how many times she had read it or had used a pen to resharpen the increasingly faded letters. Almost every empty space in the book had been penned in, Chastity’s delicate script giving detailed notes as to her own observations.

On the night after their rampage through the city, the four siblings had returned to the ruin that had been their home their entire lives. They had surreptitiously avoided Mary Lou’s body, along with the body of one of Grindelwald’s men, each taking whatever necessities that they could find.

Credence had looked for his sheet music among the rubble, but gave up when he was unable to shift the heavy beam that had crushed most of his bedroom. Temperance and Modesty had three dollars in coins that they had taken from their room, coins which they automatically gave to Credence to look after, along Modesty’s collection of marbles. (Later they had ended up trading all but one the marbles for half a loaf of stale bread that an old man had offered to them in an alley.)

The only possession that Chastity had taken had been her threadbare book. There wasn’t much in her room to begin with, but the majority of the items within had been Mary Lou’s hand-me-downs. Those she left completely untouched before leaving the room to root out any food in the kitchen.

Now, she was rereading the section of the book that gave descriptions on infectious diseases. She had puzzled over Credence’s sickness, but rereading the familiar pages gave her no new answers.

She was about to keep reading about diphtheria when she thought about getting one of the girls to climb up to the roof and check on their warehouse. She glanced back at Modesty. With the scrunched expression on her face and the point of her pink tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth, she was the picture of concentration.

Chastity looked down at what she could see of her hair, hiding her expression as she caught sight of the knots that were looped through her sister’s fingers. She looked around for Temperance but didn’t see her. Come to think of it, it had been several minutes since she’d seen or heard her.

She called out her sister’s name and waited, hearing no response. She looked back at Modesty who, despite having her hands full of hair, was looking around as well. Chastity tucked her book into her bag and swung it over her shoulder. Simultaneously, both girls climbed down off of the crates and began walking down the alley where Chastity had last seen their sister.

A breeze blew their way, bringing with it the smell of burning meat. Her stomach growled indignantly at the smell, demanding to be fed. She looked at Modesty whose eyes had gone white and opaque. A quick mental picture of herself from Modesty showed that her own eyes had gone white too.

Both girls hurried after the smell, going only a little ways around one of the buildings before finding Temperance. Her hunger quickly turned into revulsion as she comprehended what Temperance had done. On the ground next to her sister was a sharp and bloody rock, a pile of dead rats, and what was the apparent skin and insides of another rat.

Temperance had skewered the body of the rat and was now evidently trying to cook the thing. When she caught sight of her sisters she waved it cheerfully at them. “Guess who solved our food problem! Why didn’t I think of this before? We could have been eating every night!”.

Her grin faded a bit when she caught sight of Chastity’s horrified expression. “What?”, she asked before returning her charred rat to the small trash fire she had made. Chastity swallowed hard before coming closer to Temperance. She asked in a slightly querulous voice, “Sweetheart, have you eaten any of these rats?”. Temperance looked up at her, confused by her tone. “No”, she said slowly “I was going to cook a couple and bring them over”.

In response, Chastity moved lightning fast, knocking the greasy little body out of Temperance’s hand and began kicking dirt onto the fire. “We don’t eat rats Temperance! Rats carry so many diseases, don’t you ever listen to me?”. She looked back at Temperance just in time to see her eyes go opaque before she was tackled to the ground.

She felt the breath come out of her in a little whoosh as Temperance bore the two of them down. Temperance then began scrambling away in the direction Chastity had hit the cooked rat. Chastity pushed herself up, one hand on her stomach where Temperance had collided with her.

When she stood however she was suddenly overcome with dizziness, causing her to stumble a bit. She watched as if from a strangely far distance as Temperance held up her rat in triumph. As the distance increased she saw her sister’s face evolve into an expression of fear. Vaguely she knew she was falling backward, but she didn’t know how to stop.

She felt someone catch her body before she smacked into the ground, wasn’t that nice? Before she blacked out she heard Temperance’s voice from far away. “Oh God, I killed her!”.

 

Modesty pushed Temperance gently out of the way as she did her best to cradle Chastity to the ground. “Chastity, I won’t eat any rats I promise!”, Temperance said in a whine as she rubbed at Chastity’s arm.

Modesty knew that if Chastity were conscious, she’d push Temperance’s bloody rat fingers away from her. As if she could hear Modesty’s thoughts, Chastity groaned and opened her eyes. She looked down at fingers in question and recoiled slightly.

While Modesty’s face remained expressionless, she smiled inwardly. She knew her siblings well. Chastity began to pull herself up waving off Temperance’s help.

Temperance’s face was devastated. Chastity put her features into a stern cast. “Go and wash up, now.” In the blink of an eye Temperance had dashed back the way her sisters had come earlier, presumably to the rusted out rain barrel not far from their crate pile.

Modesty leaned into Chastity, silently offering to take some of her weight. Chastity accepted, if only slightly, and the two of them made their way to the crate pile.

“We’re going feral” thought Chastity.

As they came around the corner again they passed Temperance using an old can to fish water out of the barrel before dumping it over her arms. Modesty forcibly maneuvered her sister to sit behind the crate pile, out of sight. She heard someone walking their way.

She gave Chastity a pointed look before sending a mental picture to both of her sisters. The picture showed the three of them hiding behind the crates, watching a blurred outline of a man walk past. Temperance sidled up beside Modesty, making a shield in front of Chastity.

Both girls moved forward a bit so that they could peer through the gaps between the crates. When they saw who the figure was, they concurrently made the decision to climb to the front of the crate pile.

They watched as Mr. Graves began walking in the opposite direction in which they were sitting.

“We could ask for his help” thought Modesty to Temperance.

“Why is he here in the shipyard though?”, she replied as she watched him.

She gave a loud wolf whistle in the man’s direction. Both girls watched as he jumped slightly and spun around to look at them. They watched as his face broke into a smile and he approached the two of them.

The smile faltered however as he got closer. Temperance sniffed the air, the smell of food coming from the bag Mr. Graves had on his back catching her attention. Her stomach tightened on itself as saliva began to pool in her mouth like it had when she was cooking her rat.

She felt Modesty read this thought through their link, her stomach clenching too.

Fighting the overwhelming urge to pounce on the man, Temperance asked “Mr. Graves, how the hell did you find us?”

******************************************************************************

Graves was on the verge of backing up.

Looking into the ghostly eyes of the two girls sent a shiver down his spine. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea.

They were Obscurials after all, he hardly knew them or how much control they all had. He had very nearly taken a step back when a tired voice snapped “Temperance, language!”.

Some of the tension melted away as the two girls looked over their shoulders at the ground behind them. He watched as Modesty jumped down behind the crates.

Temperance’s head swung back around to look at Graves, her expression still suspicious. With a look like that, she might have even rivaled Seraphina’s trademark glare.

His eyes flicked to movement behind the stack of crates as Chastity and her sister came back into view. He felt concern as he looked the older girl over. She looked paler than when he’d seen her last and she had dark circles under her eyes.

He noticed that she was leaning against Modesty for support, poor girl looked dead on her feet. He made a move toward her, to give her a hand, but stopped as a growl came from Temperance. He looked back up at her. That noise came out of a kid? Her body language was still hostile and her eyes were still white.

“Mr. Graves?”, asked Chastity, her voice coming out rather small. “What are you doing here?”.

Graves opened his mouth, but then closed it again. How did he give an answer to something that he didn’t really understand himself?

“I, uh, was looking for you, all four of you.” His insides tightened, knowing how suspicious that sounded.

“Why?”, asked Temperance, still looking ready to pounce.

Why was he here? How could he explain to someone in their situation that he was here altruistically? Without losing face, how did he say that they were giving him a purpose, for however long their contact lasted?

He glanced at Chastity quickly before snapping his eyes back to Temperance. He decided to test a theory from their previous encounter. He let down the barriers in his mind, screaming his thoughts while he said them out loud.

“One of you is a Legilimens, can’t you tell why I’m here? I came looking for you, not because I want to hurt any of you, but because I know you need help!”.

His gaze flicked to all three of the faces watching him. He gave another mental shout and watched as Modesty gave an almost imperceptible flinch.

He barely knew any of these kids, but out of the four of them, he knew Modesty the least. Hell, he'd never even heard her talk. He didn’t know anything of her personality, but if she was anything like her siblings, she would maybe give him a chance.

He tried to direct his thoughts to her, not knowing if he was successfully getting through or not. " _Please understand, from what I see, the five of us are dying one way or another. I need…. help. And so do the four of you. I’m not going to hurt any of you, I promise"._

He looked into her face which remained expressionless. She gave nothing away in her posture or body language. Her eyes however had moved to look at him, staring hard. Then he felt it. It was a touch lighter than a feather, lighter than air. He felt her touching his mind. He doubted he could have felt such a light touch if he wasn’t looking for it.

He saw Temperance’s posture relax out of the corner of his eye.

Chastity let out a breath of relief and sagged into the pile of crates. Reflexively, Graves leaped forward and helped her to sit on the ground. She gave him a weak smile as she leaned against one of the crates.

“Sorry”, she mumbled, bringing a hand to her face. As if starving to death was something to be ashamed of.

As he sat down, Modesty moved and sat on the other side of her sister, pressing close so that Chastity could lean against her.

The wood creaked as Temperance finally came down. She plopped unceremoniously on Chastity’s other side, facing Graves. He noticed that her eyes had lost some of their opacity, but not quite all of it.

She pointed at his rucksack, “How much you want for those sandwiches?”, she said in a mildly threatening, offhanded tone.

Graves watched Chastity’s head fall back, her expression of mortification deepening.

“He brought them for us”, said a different voice, making Graves jump slightly. Modesty was looking at him, her expressionless face was starting to become disconcerting. “Didn’t you, Mr. Graves?”.

Suppressing shiver at the intensity of her gaze, Graves fumbled the bag around to his front, glad for an excuse to do something.

“Yes, made them this morning as a matter of fact.”

He pulled up the bundle of sandwiches and undid the knot at the top. He pulled the first sandwich off the top of the stack with the intention of giving it to Chastity, but then caught sight of Temperance’s opaque white eyes and slowly smoking shoulders.

He practically threw the ham and cheese at her as she twitched forward. She caught the sandwich and had already wolfed half of it down before he had pulled out another. He tossed her the second sandwich which she promptly began devouring, thankfully clear eyed and entirely corporeal.

Cautiously he dropped another sandwich onto her knee before passing one to Chastity and then one to Modesty. Chastity gave him an apologetic look after eying Temperance with a worried expression.

Graves waved her off and continued to pass them sandwiches. While neither of the other two girls were quite as voracious as Temperance, it didn’t take long for the pile to be decimated. How long had it been since they’d eaten?

Percival kept quiet while they ate, even though he was burning to ask questions. He looked at the remaining three sandwiches in the bag and tried to school his tone into one that was more casual that his regular voice.

“If I could ask a question?”

He checked for the nod of assent from Chastity before asking, “Where’s your brother?”.

The three girls stared, Chastity’s and Temperance’s expressions changing into looks of horror.

Graves pulled back in surprise as Temperance leapt to her feet and began scrambling up the stack of crates. He watched in confusion as she leaped from the top of the pile and onto the roof of a rundown shed, quickly disappearing from sight.

He looked to Chastity, one eyebrow raised in a silent question. Chastity bit her lip and looked unsure of what to say.

Modesty nudged her shoulder meaningfully in the shoulder. Both sisters shared a glance before Chastity looked back at Graves.

“Credence is unwell at the moment”, she started slowly, looking at him as if gauging his reaction. “We hid him somewhere he could rest while we looked for food, but when we tried to get back to him, the whole building was full of people.”

Graves watched as she gnawed her lip nervously. Modesty’s head lifted to look up at the roof seconds before Temperance came back into view.

“There’s still a lot of those men hanging around the building, but I think they’ve finished with moving the boxes.”, she reported. “They're all just standing around smoking now”.

Modesty stood up and began climbing the crates, making her way to the roof. Temperance caught her sister midjump and swung her onto the roof. Without a backward glance, the two of them disappeared from view.

Graves retied the bundle of sandwiches before stuffing them into his bag. As he stood, he shrugged back into the rucksack and put out a hand to help Chastity to her feet. She accepted and allowed him to pull her scant weight up to meet him.

“You four wouldn’t happen to be hiding out in that old red warehouse, would you?”.

She stared at him, several emotions crossing her face.

“I’m… well at least I was, the Director of Magical Security at MACUSA” he said as if this was some kind of explanation she’d understand. “I’m very good at my job”.

He didn’t delve into the fact that it was pure and unbelievable chance that had led him to finding the Obscurials. The need to look cool and collected seemed to be important at the moment for some reason.

He began to walk in the direction of the warehouse, but stopped when he noticed that Chastity wasn’t following. She still looked pale and dizzy, all the while still worrying her lip.

She slowly walked up to him, her demeanor still nervous.

“Would you mind waiting while we go and talk to Credence first? Or maybe I could just bring him the sandwiches? It’s not that I think you’re gonna hurt us sir, it’s just…”

Percival gave an internal wince as he realized that his excitement was coming off a little strong.

“It’s just that you don’t know me”, he finished.

Chastity gave him a small, but sincere smile. “I know you want to help Mr. Graves. Let me go and talk to Credence and then I’ll bring him down so that we’ll all talk, ok?”.

He nodded and shrugged out of the bag before handing it to her. She took it shyly before continuing on. She walked a few feet down the alley before stopping and turning back to him.

“Mr. Graves”, she was still smiling hesitantly, “It means a lot that you came, I… we appreciate it.”

He gave her a nod, trying not to smile back, doing his best to keep his face stoic and calm; he didn't want to come off as eager in case it looked creepy.

He watched as she walked away, feeling lighter inside. Hands in his pockets, he walked the short distance to the dock and looked out over the river for a few minutes. When he turned to look at the warehouse he saw the surrounding area was empty.

He thought about walking closer to the building when a movement caught his eye. A thin man slowly came around the side of one of the warehouses.

Graves’ eyes flicked to the right as another man slunk around the adjacent building.

He looked at their body language, taking in their predatory stances. His eyes flicked to their hands. Both had their wands out and held ready. He looked at their faces and knew them.

With a twitch of his wrist, his own wand dropped into his waiting hand.

Rat face on the left and Bullfrog on the right. He’d never liked either of them when they were in his department a few years ago and wasn’t sorry that they'd been relieved of their positions. Judging by the expressions on their faces, the dislike between them was mutual.

The two ex-aurors watched him for any slight movement, anything to kick the confrontation off. Leeds on the left, he remembered went for quick painful curses, usually trying to take out his opponent’s knees or eyes, rather than dealing with a drawn-out fight. Dausset on the other hand liked to break bones and ask questions later, many of the people that he was supposed to be protecting ending up in the hospital.

He hadn’t been really surprised when Seraphina had told him that they had been spotted within Grindelwald’s circles. Scummy bastards.

Graves thought of the kids in the warehouse. Did they see the three of them out here, squaring off? He fervently hoped they stayed well away.

His attention flicked between the men’s faces. Were the men here for him, or for them? Knowing that time wasn’t on his side, Graves made the first move.

He gave a false start towards Leeds who, to his satisfaction, flinched back instinctively. Dausset charged forward and let loose a curse, aiming at Graves’ head. Summoning up a shield almost instantaneously, Graves deflected the spell before letting off two of his own. With his left hand he created another shield, instinctively batting Leeds curse to the side.

The three of them began moving in an unconscious clockwise motion, curses flying left and right as they circled each other. Whatever the two men had been expecting, they were now clearly in a duel for their lives.

Graves moved with precision and deadly accuracy, his body flowing gracefully as he timed his attacks and countermoves, almost as if he were dancing.

Regardless of what had happened in the past, Graves had been Director of Magical Security. Second to only Seraphina Picquery herself, MACUSA’s deadliest duelist, he had been undefeated for years before Grindelwald’s sneak attack.

The other two men seemed to have remembered that too late, their defenses becoming sloppy as the seconds ticked by. Leeds was limping, dragging a deadened left leg, swiping at the sheet of blood that ran into his eyes between jinxes. Dausset was clutching at his sluggishly bleeding love handle, teeth bared in a snarl.

Graves felt his own snarl as he barked out a laugh at the two ex-aurors. “What’s wrong boys, didn’t think your old boss was up to handing you your asses anymore?”

He languidly dodged a curse from Dausset before flicking his wand out in retaliation. He felt extreme satisfaction as the churned mud beneath the man’s feet exploded, causing the fat man to nearly loose his balance.

Even though he couldn’t deny that he was enjoying himself, it felt amazing to vent his pent-up fury and guilt onto a pair of Grindelwald’s henchmen, something kept nagging him.

His train of thought was interrupted when the two other wizards gave a synchronized attack, each sending a violent barrage of spells at him. Graves dropped into a crouch, giving them a smaller target while roaring “ _Protega Maxima_!” over the shrieking curses.

As he recovered and retaliated, his mind flicked back to the day the two wizards had been dismissed. He remembered the two of them in Seraphina’s office, but no, that was wrong.

He flung his wand arm out, banishing a curse before it connected with his chest.

His mind snapped on the missing detail from the memory. There had been _three_ men standing before Seraphina that day!

A slight noise from behind him made him throw a quick glance over his shoulder, just before something heavy smashed into the side of his head.

Explosive pain, and the disjointed feeling of his body hitting the ground.

As darkness swept across his vision he heard Bronstein’s voice say

“Quitting time boss”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geez, nobody can catch a break with me can they? Trauma is almost over (for now anyway) so hopefully my babies can take a break. (for the time being) :/ #WhatkindofmotheramI


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so first off I decided to split this chapter up because the length got way out of hand. Officially breaking tradition, just my Barebone babies for now. Second, I'm finally earning my "Graphic Depictions of Violence" rating. Its really not that bad, though if you wanted to, you can imagine this as gorily as you want.

The warehouse had finally quieted down, the silence finally letting Credence nod off. A few minutes later however, he startled awake as the old outer door of the warehouse creaked open.

Reflexively he scrambled back against the wall and into the corner, squinting as the late afternoon light splashed across his face. He brought a hand to his eyes to block some of the light, relaxing as he recognized all three of his sister’s silhouettes. “They were safe”, he thought.

He sagged further into the wall and closed his eyes against the light. He kept his eyes closed as he heard the door creak shut, the sound of the steadily approaching footsteps letting him know they were ok.

He felt the light rasp of material against his hand before Chastity’s icy hand pressed itself to his forehead. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know that Chastity’s face was set in grim lines. He knew he wasn’t getting better.

He drew in a breath to speak, but stopped when he smelled food.

That made him open his eyes and sit up, thankfully forcing Chastity to remove her death cold fingers.

His eyes tracked the smell his nose had detected, a rucksack held by Temperance. She was clutching the bag to her chest and looking at him in worry. He was about to ask where the bag came from when Modesty spoke up.

“We saw Mr. Graves, the real Mr. Graves”.

Credence’s brow furrowed as he looked at Chastity questioningly. She ignored the look in favor of examining his forehead, as if there was a mystery to be discovered there.

“He brought us food, there’s some for you too”, piped up Temperance shaking the bag for emphasis.

Credence made a gesture for them to continue. “And?”. “He’s waiting outside”, Chastity said quietly, finally looking him in the eye. She pointed at the bag in Temperance’s arms. “He came looking for us, although I have no idea how he did”, she gave a confused look to Modesty.

Modesty in turn shrugged, “You heard him, he's good at his job”.

Chastity made a face before turning back to Credence.

“I think we should talk to him again. He came all this way to bring us food, and I know he isn’t a bad man.”

She looked at him imploringly. He knew what she was hoping for. Even though he was a little skeptical as to the reasons for Graves’ generosity, it didn’t bother him over much. If Modesty liked him, that was reason enough for Credence to trust him.

That, and the fact that Credence was beginning to worry about the possibility of himself getting worse. He didn’t want to think about the girls having to fend for themselves without him. No, this seemed like a reasonable enough gamble for them to take.

Temperance came forward and offered him half a sandwich, the other half being divided between herself and Modesty. While the smell of food had intrigued him, the thought actually eating the sandwich made his stomach want to heave. He leaned back and shook his head, trying to evade the ham and cheese like it was poison.

Temperance brought the sandwich closer and closer until Chastity gently batted her arm away. “In a minute”, she chided.

Credence looked at his little sister’s face. Temperance still looked determined that her brother was going to eat. She retreated a few steps back and watched him carefully, as if he was going to try and make an escape. He knew her heart was in the right place, even if her enthusiasm was occasionally trying.

He was about to comment on the sandwich, when Modesty suddenly tensed. She practically leapt to her feet, and ran to the door on the other side of the room.

Credence and his other two sisters went on alert. Temperance was across the room in a second, helping Modesty heave the door open.

“Girls, wait!”, called Chastity as she yanked Credence after her.

She had practically dragged him to the door before he was able to get his feet under him.

They joined the two other girls on the tiny landing, Temperance already giving Modesty a leg up onto the roof. Modesty only acted like this when their lives were in danger, so why was she scrambling up onto the roof?

Chastity in turn gave Temperance a boost before jumping up to the rim of the roof. Still confused, Credence pushed up the bottoms of her feet, turning away to give her exposed legs a modicum of privacy.

All three girls poked their heads over the edge and reached for him, trying to pull him up. It would have been funny if not for the worry on their faces. Credence tensed his achy muscles and jumped, feeling numerous hands help tug him higher.

He could tell that the girls were in conversation through the link as they helped haul him onto the roof. He missed the intimate contact that the link allowed, but still wasn’t up to trying to reconnect.

Fighting momentary dizziness, he crawled on his stomach after Modesty. 

As they came closer to the edge of the roof that overlooked the river, the sounds of magic became clear. The four of them peeked out over the edge of the roof and stared at the scene before them.

Leeds and Dausset, two of Grindelwald’s henchmen, were standing side by side across from Mr. Graves. Credence’s eyes danced back and forth between the three men as they appeared to be trying to shoot each other with magic.

The sight of the three men made Credence uneasy with memories of pain at their hands. But no, this was different. This was the real Mr. Graves. He was evidently fighting against the other two men, and apparently winning.

Mr. Graves barked out a laugh as the two men began to fumble in their defenses, getting slower as the seconds ticked by. In comparison, Mr. Graves seemed to be getting faster, his magic letting off hisses and bangs as he danced around his opponent’s spells.

Temperance gave a hushed whoop as one of Mr. Graves’ spells caused a large crater to appear in front of Dausset. Her excitement turned to a gasp of horror however as the four of them saw Bronstein suddenly appear behind Mr. Graves.

Modesty suddenly threw herself onto Temperance, wrapping her arms around her sister’s waist. Chastity also helped to hold her down, leaning much of her weight onto both of them. Temperance was growling quietly as Credence saw Bronstein hit Mr. Graves in the head with a large brick.

The man instantly crumpled to the ground, and Credence nearly dove off the roof himself. His mind sped through different ideas and scenarios as his fist clenched themselves angrily. In better condition, he knew between the four of them, they could probably take the three other witches. But as he was, he knew it wouldn’t work.

Credence’s horror escalated as he watched Leeds use his wand to lift Mr. Graves’ body and fling him into the river. The scuffle on the side of him increased as Temperance began fighting more savagely from beneath her sisters.

Credence slid over and laid a hand on Temperance’s arm. Immediately she stilled and he could hear a stifled sob from the bottom of the pile. “Just wait a minute”, he whispered.

He barely paid attention to his body as it began taking deep preparatory breaths while clenching and unclenching his muscles.

He turned his attention back to the three witches below. He watched as Bronstein gestured violently with his heavily bandaged stump to the watch on his right arm. He then pointed at the warehouse angrily and began yelling unintelligibly. Then, he disappeared right on the spot.

Credence ducked down next to the girls as the other two men began hurrying toward the front doors. When he heard the quiet slam of the front door, his body went into automatic action.

Without a conscious decision, his body exploded into smoke and he leapt off of the roof. The pain was excruciating, but it was pushed to the back of his mind. He felt his sisters do the same but stopped to watch as he rapidly transformed back.

Pointing himself like and arrow, his human body dove into the river. The shock of the icy water on his overheated skin very nearly had him tearing back up for the surface.

Credence clamped his teeth together and began digging his way towards the spot where he’d seen Graves thrown in. The river was a dark and oppressive weight all around him, cutting his visibility to absolutely nothing.

After almost a minute his head breached the surface. He treaded water stiffly as he panted, spinning around until he faced the dock, checking on his sisters. Satisfied that they were momentarily safe, he dove again, this time angling with the current as he dug down.

After several fruitless seconds, he was about to call this dive quits and begin for the surface. He had nearly started back up when his fingers scraped against sodden material. He grasped around frantically in the gloom until his hand closed around a limp arm.

Feeling about with his other arm, he was able to grasp around the man’s torso and begin to try and pull up. With the added drag of Graves’ body and his own rapidly flagging strength, Credence was becoming hard pressed to keep down his rising panic. He legs began feeling leaden and he had to fight the overwhelming urge to cough.

He desperately kept swiping up and up as he finally saw a glimmer of light, seemingly miles ahead. He tightened his grip on Graves and plowed on. Bright spots began exploding in his vision while his lungs felt like they were on fire. He was almost ready to give up when he felt his hands break the surface, quickly followed by his head and shoulders.

His breath exploded out of his chest in a ragged cough as he desperately clung to the body beside him. He knew he needed to keep Graves’ head above the water, but it was all he could do to keep his own up. He gasped in air between coughs as he rolled back in an effort to try and raise Graves.

He suddenly felt wonderful heat graze the side of his face as one of his sisters, Modesty he realized, began pulling them toward the dock. In their incorporeal forms, they weren’t really able to pick up objects, but they could easily hang on or bunch themselves enough to push objects around. Modesty was doing that now, the silky black sand that made up her body gently and swiftly hauling them forward.

Credence wrapped both his arms around Graves’ body and did his best to keep his head above the frigid water. He cradled the poor man to his chest, praying they weren’t too late. When after what felt like an hour, Credence felt his hip bump against one of the pilings.

He looked up in a daze as he saw two pairs of arms reach down toward him. With a great heave he lifted Graves into the air as far as his position allowed. He heard violent hissing as the embers that studded Modesty’s smoky form hit the water as she attempted to help push Mr. Graves’ body up.

Just a few more inches.

He sagged down the piling in relief as Chastity’s fingers finally snagged one lolling arm. Modesty whipped up over the side of the dock and a moment later, joined her other two sisters in hauling the man up.

Credence felt relief and exhaustion wash over him as he leaned his head against the piling. He heard his name and with an effort looked up to see the grasping hands of his sisters. If it hadn’t been for their fearful little faces he might have just let himself go.

With what felt like a herculean effort, he pulled himself up the supports on the side of the piling until he reached the lip of the dock, whereupon his sisters pulled him over the edge.

He lay there shivering and panting until he was pulled into a sitting position.

The three siblings turned their attention to their sister as she worked over the unmoving form of Percival Graves. The man lay on his back as Chastity’s inky hands worked across his chest. Smoke curled over her arms and coiled up from her back as she bent over the prone body.

Credence’s somewhat foggy brain remembered the kitten that their mother had drowned in the mop bucket a few years prior. Cats were supposedly tools of witches and Mary Lou had seldom suffered them to be in her presence.

Chastity had taken the limp little body from the bucket and ran into the alley behind the church. She had made Credence hold open her medical book to the diagram that showed lungs while she had pumped gently into its chest for several minutes.

She sobbed the whole time, while he had clutched the book between his slightly shaking hands. After a while he began to try and convince her to stop, the poor thing was dead.

Credence had been on the verge of taking the little body away when they heard a miniscule cough come from Chastity’s hands. She gave a sob and gently tilted the kitten down as she continued to massage it to life.

After a few minutes the kitten was breathing on its own, looking around fearfully as both Chastity and Credence rubbed at its damp fur. They had walked a few blocks away before leaving it on the steps of another church, one where they knew the nuns within had a soft spot for animals.

When they returned home to their inevitable punishment, it had seemed almost worth enduring in the knowledge that their mother had been thwarted.

Now though, Credence wondered how this was going to turn out. The man had been in the water a lot longer than that kitten had. 

He watched as she rhythmically massaged the area over his heart, her hands blurry and dark beyond recognition. When she turned to face him he saw tears pouring from her entirely white eyes.

“I've gotten his heart beating again”, she said in a frighteningly calm voice.

She never paused in her motions, but brought her gaze back to the man in front of her. Mr. Graves’ normally handsome features were now turning a deathly grey-blue; his usually controlled expression slack and abnormally still.

“What do you need me to do?”, he asked quietly.

Chastity didn’t speak for a moment as she continued to rub at the man’s chest. “Come around to this side”, she nodded to her left before continuing “Tilt back his head, pinch his nose, and breathe out into his mouth.”

Obediently, Credence moved over and did as he was asked. He gently tilted back the man’s head, took a deep breath and slotted his mouth over a chill and unresponsive pair of lips.

As he breathed out, a delirious thought wriggled through his brain like an eel. _Am I kissing a dead man?_ A slightly crazier thought wormed past the first. _At least our first kiss is a memorable one._

Credence gave himself a mental shake. He really was cracking up.

He had leaned back to take in another shaky breath when he felt a twitch under his fingers. He looked down at Graves and saw the man’s throat twitch and his face screw up.

Chastity let out a sob right before Graves began to gag and choke. Both siblings immediately moved and together rolled the man onto his side as he began coughing and retching, river water rushing across the dock.

The other two girls pressed forward, following Chastity’s instruction to try and hold the man steady. She tugged Credence forward and had him hold Graves’ head still as the man fought to clear his lungs. Modesty rubbed the man’s back while she whispered calming platitudes in a soft susurration: _you’re safe, keep breathing, you’re ok, keep breathing._

Despite everything Credence felt his eyes widen at that. Modesty never spoke around strangers, let alone allowed any kind of physical contact.

Chastity began running her fingers over the ugly wound on the side of Graves’ head. As the man kept coughing and gasping in air, Chastity slowly began to knit the torn flesh across his temple. Credence watched as she finished up, the swollen bruise slowly fading into rapidly warming flesh.

Mr. Graves seemed to have finally emptied his lungs and just lay there with his head in Credence’s lap, panting and coughing, his eyes screwed shut. Chastity gently ran her hands through his hair as he breathed, doing her best to calm the poor man.

Temperance moved forward and slipped Mr. Graves’ lost wand into his hand, and after a few moments, his fingers curled around the slim stick. A few moments more and he opened his eyes and began trying to push himself up.

All four of them either pushed or pulled him into a sitting position, Modesty pressing her back into his.

He sagged against her, still raggedly panting as he eyed the rest of them. He blinked slowly, clearly trying to place together the last several minutes.

“They’re at the top of the warehouse now”, said Modesty quietly as the silence stretched on.

Mr. Graves’ head jerked to the old building and then back to Credence’s face. He made a noise, like he was trying to talk, but only coughed.

“How?”, he tried again with a shiver, his voice coming out as a strained rasp.

His eyes flicked to Credence again, apparently just noticing Credence’s own shivering, completely soaked frame, and clicking teeth.

Mr. Graves’ expression gained understanding and his eyes widened as he looked over at Chastity who had her head against Temperance’s shoulder, her expression exhausted. The man’s eyes flicked down to his side where Chastity’s dark hand still rested, still obviously repairing damage.

Mr. Graves raised his wand and made a lazy circling gesture, the result of which became clear as the air warmed around the five of them pleasantly.

“We should probably move”, said Modesty quietly “It’s getting dark, and they’re nearly done searching.”.

Mr. Graves nodded and began to shakily haul himself to his feet. Modesty allowed him the use of her arm as he pulled himself straight, his teeth clenched with the effort.

Credence took a step forward, but wobbled and nearly tripped over his own feet. He felt a large warm hand catch him around the middle as he stumbled. The hand gently pushed him into a proper standing position as Mr. Graves caught his eye.

“You alright boy?”, he asked.

Credence began to nod, but quickly turned his head to the side as his throat exploded into a series of wretched coughs. The hand on his abdomen moved up to his shoulder and stayed there as Credence leaned against it and did his best to keep his lungs where they belonged.

When Credence had finally got his breath back he looked into Mr. Graves’ face, surprised at the concern he saw there.

“Merlin’s beard boy”, he said before moving his hand to Credence’s forehead, “You're on fire”.

Credence felt shame at having inconvenienced the man, and was about to reply when a loud crack interrupted him.

Mr. Graves spun around, suddenly looking fierce and deadly despite the disheveled state he was in. With a flick of his hand, Chastity and Temperance were jerked behind him, Modesty moving behind him of her own accord.

Leeds sneered at the group as he drew out his wand.

“Jesus, Graves, don’t you ever fucking die?”

Credence watched as Leeds’s wrist began to roll, how Mr. Graves tensed as he raised his own wand, his other arm coming out to try and protect the girls behind him.

He knew in his clouded mind that Mr. Graves would be too slow, his trip into the river had seen to that.

For the second time that day, Credence felt his body explode into action without his consent. Like he had done in the alley with Bronstein, his transformation happened with each consecutive step he took.

Leeds however was nowhere near as brave as Bronstein had been.

He saw in the man’s face, the desire to run, the rat like cast of his features apparently going more than just skin deep. Then, as he collided with Leeds, the whole world changed.

There was a bright, horrible tearing pain, coupled with a mad suffocating pressure that spun horribly around Credence. Several seconds later he collapsed face first in to a pile of muddy refuse, back in his corporeal body.

Pain, agonizing pain burned across the left side of his ribs in a line that ended about halfway down the middle of his outer thigh. He couldn’t even scream the pain was so intense. He tried to gasp in air, but only curled into a ball as he was wracked with a series of terrible coughs.

Credence thought he was going to black out as the coughs showed no sign of ceasing until finally, mercifully, he was able to draw in a breath. He stayed like that, he knew not how long, focusing on pulling air into his starved lungs as his side burned.

He flinched at a weak sound next to him.

He lifted his head up to see what had made the noise, but slammed them shut quickly, turning his head and fighting the nausea that rose suddenly in his throat.

Credence took several deep breaths through his nose and turned back to the sight beside him. Leeds, or what was left of him, was lying half propped against the side of the building that made up half of the alley.

From the chest up, Leeds might have looked alright. Rather grey and sweaty, put mostly ok.

From the chest down however was an entirely different story. Where the rest of the man’s torso and beyond should have been, was a bloody void that held what was apparently half of his ruined insides.

Leeds made another sound, this one slighter than the last.

Credence felt his horror deepen. _He was still alive_.

Credence tried to drag himself through the muck with his right arm, but made little progress. His body had had enough and wouldn’t give him anymore energy.

His hand reached out and was able to grasp Leeds’s stiff fingers. Credence became aware that he was babbling nonsense at the man. “It’s alright Mr. Leeds, help is coming, don’t you worry. You just sit tight, they’ll be along to collect us in a bit.”

Credence flinched and grew silent as Leeds’s head lolled to face him.

The man’s eyebrows rose and he nodded once, as if he understood. Then his eyes went out of focus and his head slumped forward on his chest. Credence heard the breath rattle in his throat and let go of Leeds’s hand.

Even though the man had been involved in the misery that he and his sisters had endured all those months ago, he hoped the man would be able to find peace in death.

He turned and began trying to drag himself away from the body, the proximity making him desperately want to put distance between them.

When he had pulled himself out of the muck and couldn’t see Leeds’s body anymore. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at the gap between the two buildings, his side still bleeding sluggishly.

He knew he was going to die here, but that was ok he supposed. He never thought he would die somewhere grand anyway.

He would miss his sisters when he was in hell, but it couldn't be helped.

He was going to have to see his mother again, but there would be time enough to dwell on that later.

He hoped that Mr. Graves took care of his sisters. He seemed to genuinely want to help them, and that was a pretty fine thing.

Mr. Graves. _Percival_ , he thought with tired satisfaction.

His first kiss, it still counted in Credence’s mind, had been the kiss that had brought the man back to life. How many people got to say something like that?

The corners of his mouth twitched as he closed his eyes tiredly. Even if Mr. Graves hadn’t kissed him back, it was still something memorable.

He let his mind wander and fantasize as he drifted into unconsciousness, the slight smile still on his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is not how CPR works. We all know that this is not how CPR works. However, this is how MAGICAL CPR might work. Magically. Also, I hope Credence doesn't come off as being too creepy here. (He's supposed to be getting delirious) If he is, blame me and bad writing, not the cinnamon roll!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all those still interested in this fic, I deeply apologize for the massive gap between chapters. All I can really say that Life happened. People died, school changed, jobs changed, circumstances changed, its been rough. Anyway I will never intentionally abandon this fic even though there may be massive gaps in which I am unable to post. Please enjoy and pass on any feedback! :D

Chastity let out a horrified scream as her brother disappeared along with most of Leeds. A small stream of black smoke thrashed through the air before it decoalesced into nothingness.

Percival spun the girls around to face the river as he made his way over to investigate what remained of Leeds. He fought back rising memories of bloody trenches and the horrors therein. This was neither the time or place for such things to bother him now. He gritted his teeth and marched over toward the utter mess of gore on the ground, but was surprised to see the two older girls following beside him. He was about to wave them off, but stopped as they made their way past him. They had every right to look if they wanted he supposed.

He looked back at Modesty who was sitting on the dock still facing the way he had spun her, only now she had curled herself around her drawn up knees. He pursed his lips and followed the other two girls toward the warehouse. Thankfully, Leeds’s legs had now gone still as Percival looked them over. He had seen splinchings before, hell even some of his best aurors had done it accidently out in the field. This however took the goddamn cake. What the fuck had Leeds been thinking, trying to apparate half-cocked with an Obscurial right on top of him? He looked at the two girls; Chastity with her hand over her mouth, was looking at Leeds’s legs. Temperance’s face was as grim looking as Percival’s. “Where did he go?”, she asked emphatically.

He shook his head, but Modesty cut off further conversation by dragging him and Temperance quickly towards a pile of barrels. Chastity quickly followed unprompted, crouching down as Modesty tugged him down next to her. Graves had just ducked down when Dausset apparated onto the muddy square. When he saw the gory mess that was Leeds, he turned the other way and wretched. Graves made his move, popping up from behind the barrels with his wand in hand. He sidestepped the crouching girls and bellowed “ _Petrificus Totalus_!” and watched as Dausset stiffened from head to foot, teetered for a moment before falling face first into the vile slurry around him. Considering everything that had happened, Graves had no sympathy for the man.

“Right then”, he rasped as the girls stood up. He knew they had to move now, they’d been here in this mess far too long. “First, we need to get you three out of here. Then we’re going to find your brother. Got it?”. The girls all nodded in agreement. Graves then turned and raised his wand, letting off a series of sparks. The four of them watched as the sparks rose fifteen feet from the ground and formed the MACUSA seal. He knew every auror on duty would feel their badge heat up and apparate to headquarters. It would take them a few minutes to pinpoint where the seal had been cast on the magical map of the city, so they needed to move fast.

He turned back to the waiting faces beside him and considered them before asking “Any of you ever apparated before?”. All three girls shook their heads no. He nodded once, having expected the answer. “Ok, this… this is not going to feel good alright? It’s going to feel weird, but I promise it doesn’t last long.” He snapped his fingers. “Over and done, just like that.” He looked each of them in the eye, only satisfied when he got a nod of ascent from all three of them. He held out his arm to the three girls and without hesitation, they all grabbed a hold. Despite the horrible circumstances in which they were embroiled, Graves felt a small warm bubble form inside his chest. The fact that without hesitation, all three girls undauntingly put their faith in him made him feel steadier in himself.

Keeping the feeling to himself, he gave them a nod. “On the count of three”, he said, stepping closer as the girls all tightened their grips. “One, two, three!”. Graves felt the familiar rush of crushing weight for all of two seconds before landing in his dimly lit living room. As soon as their feet were firmly on the floor, all three girls immediately pulled away. Graves hit the ground running, his wand flicking on just enough lights to guide him through the long hall way. He heard the girls padding quietly behind him as he made his way into his old bedroom. He determinedly kept his gaze locked on the bathroom door, refusing to look around the room. He practically kicked down the bathroom door in his haste to be in and out. He made a beeline for the cupboard in the corner that was mostly occupied by the gigantic claw footed bath tub.

Instead of rifling through the drawers to find what he needed, he opted instead for pulling them out completely from their housing. As he yanked them out, he passed them to the girls, carrying the biggest drawer out of the room himself. He made his way into the kitchen next, the girls following behind him like ducks. He knew they were scared and worried about their brother, but the need to have everything ready when he got back might make all the difference. Once in the kitchen, he waved his hand at the table, vanishing the few things therein as he plunked down the heavy drawer. He gestured for the others to follow suit. He began rifling through all four of them, pulling a few out of each: pepper up potion, Madam Delilah’s After Drowning Elixir, Dittany oil, Essence of Murtlap, pick-me-up potion, Skelegrow (just in case), Madam Delilah’s Icyheart Potion, and lastly, his grandmother’s homemade cure-all potion.

He didn’t really know what the last one did, but while he had lived with his grandmother, he had in all honestly never been spent more than a few hours being ill. Hell, if he had even sneezed as a child, his grandmother would whip that bottle out the cupboard and force him to take a swig. From the last drawer he pulled out linen bandages, piling them up next to the collection of bottles on the table. He summoned a shot glass from the liquor cabinet in the living room and began taking shots of pick-me-up, After Drowning, and (for the hell of it) a half shot of the cure-all; doing his best not gag as the flavors mixed themselves together unpleasantly. While he was dosing himself, Chastity began reading the labels off the other bottles before pushing one towards him labeled Cough Cure. He nodded and added it in with the rest.

He waved the remaining drawers back to the bathroom before he addressed the girls again. “Judging by the… uh, _amount_ of Leeds that got left behind, I’m guessing your brother’s magic either overstimulated the apparating charm, or simply hijacked it.” He took in the three blank stares with a frown before he tried again. “Your brother’s Obscurus triggered an interference with Leeds’s escape which caused the apparition to go wrong. Most likely this took the two of them somewhere other than where Leeds had intended, causing Leeds’s uh, accident.” With a flash of realization, he elaborated “When wizards apparate, it’s a spell that they use to travel from one place to another, instantly. For it to work, the wizard has to keep a picture of their destination in mind while traveling. If this gets interrupted, or hijacked, the wizard apparating doesn’t make it where they intended.”

This time, his explanation got two blank stares and a nod from Modesty. “Before Credence and Leeds, apparated…?”, she began, looking at Graves for confirmation. When he nodded encouragingly she continued. “Credence’s last thought was to get rid of Leeds while keeping us safe. I think he would have thought of somewhere he considered safe. _Especially_ if he felt what we just went through without any warning.” Chastity gave a shudder, but nodded at the thought. Temperance, apparently catching on, piped up with, “He probably went to either the tree or the library since the warehouse got ruined.” Graves latched onto that idea. “Tree, library?”, he asked. Chastity nodded, “The big tree in Central Park, the one that has the huge bowl in it, and the big library uptown, the one they never finished.”

Graves knew both locations from memory, although he was slightly surprised that they knew about Central Park’s only Traveler’s Chalice. When he had been a boy his grandfather had let him climb inside the tree’s huge “chalice” nearly every time they visited the park. The library he also knew because he had wandered past it the day before. “Right”, he said standing away from the table. “I’ll go and check these places, but I want you three to stay here.” Temperance opened her mouth, as if to argue, but closed it again as Modesty gave her a nudge. Chastity spoke up, “You’ll go faster if it’s just you. We can stay here and wait while you go out and look. While you're gone, we’ll try and think of any more places he might have gone.” Percival gave a bow, “Many thanks ladies.” Chastity gave a self conscience wave of her hand, but Graves shook his head. “You four pulled me out of the river and brought me back to life”. He looked straight at Chastity. “I am deeply in your debt”. His eyes went to each of their pale faces. All three girls looked a little mortified, as if the idea of someone being obligated to help them was a horrifying prospect. _What hellish lives had they been forced to live through?_ , he wondered. He knew this wasn’t going to be the last time he thought this, the likelihood that it wouldn’t be far from his mind for a long time was rather high. It seemed that the idea of someone hurting these kids was as repulsive to him as the idea of holding a debt was to them. He gave another bow and disapparated.

 

When he apparated in the middle of the park, thankfully, no one was around. Upon landing, Percival lost his balance and flopped onto the ground, thankfully on his arse instead of his face. He only stayed down for a moment however, before hauling himself up to his feet. He hadn’t wanted to worry the girls, they had enough to deal with already. Even though the pick-me-up potion had helped a great deal he was still feeling like an old man. As he came to the great tree, he slowly circled the massive trunk until it revealed the ladder of hand holes that allowed him entry. He was glad for the easy handholes that were spaced along the bark, if it had been hard to climb he probably wouldn’t have made it.

The nature of the tree was to protect the “traveler” inside, so apparating into the bowl wasn’t an option. He came up over the side of the rim and peered down inside. Empty, dead end. Not allowing himself to give in to dejection, Graves made his way back down the tree and began searching the surrounding area. After increasing the diameter of his sweeps several times and coming up with nothing, he decided to call the area quits. If the library also turned out to be a bust, he’d come back and try again before going checking back with the girls. Graves took several deep and steadying breaths before apparating to the library’s front steps. He was glad this time that he didn’t collapse as he stumbled over a bit of refuse.

The doors of the great building were locked, but that presented little problem for his wand as he slipped into the entranceway. He walked through and around the unfinished rooms, searching each level until he reached the roof, finding nothing. To be sure, he went back through each room, meticulously searching around every possible hiding place. Now thoroughly dejected, Graves slipped through the front door again so he could relock the building. He turned on his heel and made his way into the alley to apparate home. He stopped as he was suddenly arrested by the familiar stench of viscera. With a flick of his wrist he lit his wand, only to flinch back from the bloody torso of Leeds.

The man was most obviously dead at this point, but that fact didn’t interest Graves for long. He looked at the churned and bloody mud at his feet, his eyes following the drag marks that led away from the body. There, at the far end of the narrow alley way lay Credence. Graves hurried forward, his eyes finding the bloody line that marred the boy’s left side. He wedged himself sideways and leaned over Credence. The boy looked like death itself in the pale light pulsing from his wand tip; the weird glow casting harsh shadows over his angular features. He gave his shoulder a shake and hissed his name a few times, but got no response. He put his fingers to the side of the boy’s neck, hoping against hope for a pulse. A moment later his breath exploded out in a rush as his fingers felt the telltale twitch. “Alright boy”, he murmured as he began working his arms under Credence, “Almost home”.

He straightened with the boy’s relatively slight weight in his arms. He sent out another set of sparks that would work their way into the MACUSA seal, but apparated home before they had even begun to join themselves. As he landed in his kitchen he staggered against the table, already laying Credence next to the collection of potions. He heard the girls run over from the other side of the kitchen and begin asking numerous questions all at once. He flatly ignored them as he began ripping apart the boy’s threadbare shirt in order to get a better look at the wound there. He followed the ugly line down the prominent ladder of Credence’s ribs and past his hip. Without missing a beat he used his wand to tear the side of Credence’s ruined slacks open, grimacing as he realized how long the line of splinching went. He flicked his wand at the bottles next to Credence’s shoulder, tracing lines in the air as the stoppers on the Murtlap essence and Dittany oil uncorked themselves. He continued tracing vague figure eights as he pulled thin streams of liquid from each bottle, mixing them in midair.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched Chastity’s darkened hands carding through her brother’s hair. He remained unresponsive until Graves directed the stream of liquid to wind its way across the ugly stripe. The boy gave a pain filled groan as the mixture made its way across his ribs and side before finishing up at his thigh. Chastity gently shushed him as Graves began packing the wound with gauze before tearing the rest of his shirt off. Credence whimpered and began to try and pull away. Temperance held his right arm in place while Chastity continued to shush him quietly. Graves gave Modesty a nod of thanks as she tugged aside the remains of his pants.

He worked an arm under the boy and pulled him into a sitting positon as he and Modesty began working the bandages across his torso. Even though he was in deep concentration, the boy’s skin drew his attention. Like a hellish road map, Credence’s back was completely covered in scars. Several were obviously inflicted with a switch, while many others looked like lash marks. As his eyes traveled the marred flesh, he picked out several bad marks that were obviously magical in origin. He knew this for a fact because he bore many of the same kind on his own body. A nudge from Modesty took him from his reverie. He looked at her, but saw that she wouldn’t meet his eyes, only shaking the end of the bandage she was holding at him. He took it and began wrapping it farther down, aware that all three girls were watching him.

After they had successfully packed and bandaged the long wound, Graves gently tugged the boy into his arms again and made his way toward the numerous spare rooms. Chastity scooped up the collection bottles and dutifully followed him down the hall. Graves stopped at the empty room across from the bathroom, pausing as Temperance pushed the door open for him. The interior of the room was plain and functional compared to the majority of the house, but it was the only room that held more than one bed. As gently as he was able, Graves laid Credence’s body on the bed nearest the door. The boy had worked his way into a barely conscious state, but didn’t seem to be taking much in, waves of heat pouring from his shivering frame.

Graves took the bottle of Icyheart from Chastity’s arms along with the shot glass from earlier. He measured out half a glass before handing the bottle back to her. He knew Modesty was listening in on him as he watched her bring pillows from the other two beds to prop underneath her brother. Knowing how unpleasant this was probably going to be, he told Chastity, “Help me get him to swallow this”. She nodded and slipped beside him and held her brother in a sitting position. She looked at him expectantly when he hesitated. “He’s _really_ not going to like this, but he needs to drink as much of it as possible if we’re going to bring his fever down.” She nodded and adjusted her grip on Credence’s shoulders. As he came forward she whispered quietly into her brother’s ear. She took the glass from his hand, and in a swift motion, tipped the majority into his mouth. Percival watched as the boy swallowed reflexively before letting out a scream. His eyes flew open wide, entirely white, as his back arched him halfway off the bed. Huge clouds of steam erupted from the poor boy’s skin as he flopped back down onto the bed, panting and shaking.

Graves let out a sigh of relief, it was a small mercy that the boy had been too weak to transform. He magicked the rest of the potion from the glass before pouring in a bit of the cure-all and a bit of the Cough Cure. He handed it to Chastity who was fanning the steam away from her brother’s face. “This one won’t hurt him, I promise”. She nodded rather numbly and brought the glass to Credence’s lips again. After he had taken the potion, Graves summoned several quilts from the cabinet in the corner. He helped Chastity tuck two of them loosely around Credence before saying, “That should be enough for now, I’ll come and check on him in a few hours. Hopefully with a bit of rest he’ll start improving soon.” He looked at the trio of tired faces surrounding Credence’s bed. “If you need me, I’ll either be in the kitchen or the parlor,” Chastity nodded and turned her attention back to her brother who had lapsed into unconsciousness again. He dimmed the light on his way out of the room, making a beeline for the couch. As he went through the house, he wearily flicked his hand at the lights, bringing them all to a dim glow. He practically collapsed into the cushions as soon as he was within falling distance. He lay there for a few minutes, but remembering his promise to return in a few hours, he heaved himself into a sitting position. A few moments later however he was out cold.   

 

Percival slowly became aware of his stiff and aching muscles coupled with an almost uncomfortable heat seeping into his right side. He opened his eyes and stared confusedly at his ceiling for a few moments before attempting to straighten up. He immediately winched as he leaned forward, his joints popping angrily at their prolonged neglect. It was a little surprising that he didn’t feel worse, considering that he’d been fished out of the river, but attributed his condition to Chastity’s care. He looked down at himself and was surprised to see that he was mostly covered in an old quilt. His eyes strayed to the couch cushion next to him. He felt his eyebrows rise as he saw Temperance curled beside him, giving off the intense warmth he was beginning to realize was normal for the little group of Obscurials. His gaze softened as he watched her breathe deeply in her sleep. Having people interested in his wellbeing after so long was a little unfamiliar for him too. As if she was following his train of thought, Temperance scooched her back further into his side while drawing her knees tighter to her chest.

Reflexively he stretched out a hand and stroked her dirty hair as she settled back down. He caught sight of an ugly raised scar on her arm, peeking through the sleeve of her dress. His eyes watered in impotent rage as he remembered Credence’s mutilated back. A lot of those scars had looked to be several years old while just as many were relatively new. _What kind of sick fuck could do that to children?_ Even though he hadn’t seen scars on the other two girls, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that they were marked up as well. Percival thought of his own, more recent scars, the pain he had endured as an adult. Pain on a level that he knew had nearly broken him. He couldn’t imagine children going through a similar ordeal, it was just too horrible to think about. Graves found himself reassessing his previous theory about Grindelwald’s involvement.

With this new bit of information, Graves guessed that someone else must have had the children first. Grindelwald had only begun popping up in the papers a few years ago, so the theory didn’t quite match up. The most likely answer was that he had found the children in whatever hellhole they had been stuck in before letting them loose. The issue with that theory was the fact that the Obscurials went unnoticed for so long. There were magical detectors whose entire purpose was to find magical talent in children, No-Maj and wizarding alike. In Modesty’s case, he knew she was still too young for her Ilvermorny letter so there was a bit of leeway there.

That didn’t explain however, any reason the other three had been overlooked. Even though Credence had been ill, it was obvious his power was massive if he could control an Obscurus of that size. Chastity with her unbelievable healing talent was just as powerful. He looked down at Temperance. He wasn’t sure about her abilities, but there was little doubt in his mind that she was of a level near her siblings. How was it that these kids had never made their way into Ilvermorny? Under normal circumstances, such talent would have set them on the fast track to high standing positions within the wizarding community.

He shook his head, there were too many questions and not enough answers. Temperance mumbled in her sleep and backed farther into him, the barest hint of smoke drifting up from her arms. Percival resumed stroking her hair. He’d have to be careful around these kids if just him brooding might set them off. The grandfather clock gave a low melodic boom, causing Graves to jump. He looked at its face in the dim light and saw the late, or rather early hour. Realizing he hadn’t kept his promise to Chastity, he carefully began maneuvering himself off of the couch while doing his best not to jostle the sleeping girl. Once free, he gently scooped Temperance up into the quilt before making his way towards the guest room. He flicked his fingers at the door knob rather than trying to fumble it open. Once inside he quietly made his way to the bed that already held Modesty and tucked Temperance in beside her.

He then made his way to Chastity, gently shaking her shoulder until she lifted her head off of Credence’s bedside. She tried mumbling a few protests, but Percival ignored them in favor of leading her to the other bed in the room. He gave her a little push onto the mattress to forestall any more objections before making his way back over to Credence. He felt the boys temperature and frowned before measuring out a quarter glass more of the Icyheart potion. Percival pulled Credence into a sitting position and thought he was going to have to wrestle the boy in order to get him the potion. He was surprised to see dark eyes glittering up at him in the faint light. Graves held the shot glass up for inspection and watched as the eyes narrowed. The boy gave a slight nod so Graves brought the glass to his lips. He watched Credence’s expression as he took the potion, not wanting to get thrashed by the Obscurus. Although he grimaced as the steam jetted from his skin, the boy made no aggressive moves, filling Percival with relief.

He helped lay Credence back down and was turning to leave when a damp and still steaming hand clutched at his fingers. He turned around in mild surprise to meet Credence’s eyes, not sure what to expect. He remained still as the boy’s eyes searched his face, a little nervous under the scrutiny. The boy tried talking, but all that came out was a grating rasp, followed by a wretched cough. Graves moved forward and whispered, “ _Aguamenti”,_ filling the shot glass before handing it to Credence. After he had downed the liquid, he spoke again. “Mr. Graves”, he started nervously. “I have no way of repaying you for this, for saving me and letting the girls stay here. I promise, in the morning we’ll leave, you won’t even know that we were here.”

He had managed to push himself halfway back up when Percival put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “Credence, if I were a cruel enough man to let you leave, where would you and your sisters go?”, he asked. When Credence didn’t immediately answer Graves continued, “I owe you my life, boy. What kind of man would I be if I turned you out after what you’ve done for me? Seems to me there’s a lot more going on than the five of us know on our own. The smartest thing that comes to my mind right now is for all of you, and myself, to be on the same page. The four of you need a place to stay, and I’m not currently at my best it would seem.”

Credence’s face was set in an unreadable mask, but his eyes never left Percival’s. “The four of you staying with me looks to be the most practical solution I can think of right now. I won’t keep any of you here against your wills, but for the time being I only ask that the four of you obey a few house rules while you stay. Rules along the lines of not incinerating or otherwise destroying my house and so on. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

Credence’s eyes continued to bore into Percival’s. After several moments he was about to speak again when Credence said, “Sir, we haven’t the money to pay rent of any kind.” Graves gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m not asking for rent money boy, I’m telling you I’d like the four of you to stay! Is it that hard to believe in someone behaving altruistically?” He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment Credence broke eye contact.

Knowing what little he had gleaned about their lives, it was probably true. He ran a hand through his hair and tried again. “Credence, I'm sorry, that was unfair of me, but please believe me in the fact that I honestly want the four of you to stay. I don’t want any money in return. I only want a better grasp of what’s going on and to help the four of you. That’s all, I swear to you.” The boy searched his face and Graves held still under the scrutiny.

Whatever he was looking for he apparently found because he said with finality “Alright Mr. Graves”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally(!) got Percival and my Barebone babies under one roof! Let's chill awhile and heal for a change huh? On a side note, a Traveler's Chalice isn't part of the HPCMU, it's actually from a story I wrote in either the 3rd or 4th grade. You can't magically get inside the "chalice" or get inside if its already occupied. If someone is to meet you there, you have to exit before both of you are allowed back in. I loved the idea and have always kept it with me and several other short stories I've jotted down.

**Author's Note:**

> Would anybody out there be willing help me out with the formatting? No matter what I do this looks so bizarre to me. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!! Sorry about the crappy tags, I think I'm in over my head with all this D: Working on news chapters as soon as I'm able!


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